LEAVES/fc/w#eLOG 

of a SKY PILOT 

BEING THE LIFE OF 

WILLIAM G.PUDDEF00T 




■J I ■ 



mmm 



m 



■ 



II 



MM 



I I I ,',.'.' 



I I i. 



■ l; 



HP 




Class BX 

Gofjyiight N° . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSfT. 



LEAVES FROM THE LOG OF A SKY 
PILOT 




IMoICuiua- 



LEAVES FROM THE LOG 
OF A SKY PILOT 



BY 



WILLIAM G. PUDDEFOOT 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



r'Hifra 






COPTEIGHT, 1915 

Bt WILLIAM G. PUDDEFOOT 



TBI 

4 & 

UtL 17 191! 



©CU418093 



THE PILGRIM PREM 
BOSTOX 



)*) 






TO MY WIFE 

WITHOUT WHOSE HELP THESE PAGES 

WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN 

WRITTEN 



AN INTRODUCTION 

BY REV. JOSEPH B. CLARK, D. D. 

When it so happens that a man, in whom 
the elements of intellect, individuality and vision 
have happily mixed, can be prompted to tell the 
story of his life, — and that life a winning strug- 
gle against headwinds and cross-currents, — the 
result is almost certain to be a human document 
of more than ordinary charm and value. 

Such is the man and such his story which a 
friend of more than thirty years is privileged to 
introduce to the reader — even though fully 
aware that any introduction of William George 
Puddef oot to the reading public is an act of pure 
supererogation. 

Readers who have listened to Mr. Puddefoot 
on the platform will discover at once that he 
writes very much as he talks — with the same 
overmastering rush and glow that are so cap- 
tivating to an audience, and they will not be 
sorry to find themselves yielding to the same 
"joy of motion" which they felt in listening to 
his spoken words. 

As to the literary style of this life story it is 
all sufficing to say it is "Puddefoot's own," and, 
as such, possesses a double charm; the charm 

[ vii ] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

of transparent simplicity that no art could bet- 
ter, since "Simplicity is the highest art" — and 
the added charm of a winsome personality, which, 
unconsciously to its owner, breathes from every 
page, and is as inseparable from the story, as the 
perfume of a rose from. its flower. 

In common parlance, Mr. Puddefoot is re- 
garded as "a self-made man." A more accurate 
statement would be "a self-developed man," and 
few men have received from the past a more 
generous equipment of materials and tools for 
self-development. 

From his mother ("the most Christlike woman 
I have ever known," says her son) he derives 
his deep spiritual instincts. From his father, a 
liberal in politics and religion, the only disciple 
of Cobden and Bright in a village of Tories, he 
inherits his breadth of view, his scorn of tradi- 
tions outgrown, and his fearless advocacy of 
what he believes to be true. His passionate love 
of debate is known of all, and it is no surprise 
to learn that his paternal grandmother, a rank 
Tory, would sit up in her sick bed until midnight, 
in her eightieth year, battling the errors of her 
radical son; while, as to the author's humorous 
temperament, one has only to study the mirth- 
provoking features of his maternal grandfather, 
the astronomer, to detect the source of the Pud- 
defoot humor. From this store of inherited in- 
stincts and qualities, Puddefoot has developed, 
along the line of least resistance, the man we 

[ viii ] 



Introduction 

know today — the not unfamiliar type of a twen- 
tieth century Christian. 

From his childhood up he has been a reader 
of books — or rather, a devourer and absorber of 
their contents. His library is rich in the latest 
researches of science, and the newest discussions 
in theology, sociology and political economy by 
accredited scholars. The contents of such books, 
once read, seem to enter into his blood, become 
his inalienable possession, and astonishingly 
ready at a moment's notice for effective use. 

From this varied array of tools and his ready 
command of their use, it may be safely assumed 
that Mr. Puddefoot is a child of the age in which 
he lives — not a rationalistic age, as it is some- 
times miscalled — but, accepting President King's 
amendment, a "realistic age, demanding of all 
formulas, old or new, the verification of experi- 
ence." Creeds professing to solve eternal prob- 
lems are not to be taken by him on trust, with- 
out re-examination at the bar of experience to 
test their reality. Being the son of a radical 
father, he must begin at the root, and being in 
all things an independent thinker, he must em- 
ploy his own method of investigation. He is 
the last man to set his faith by the steeple clock, 
if he can find a dial set by the sun. 

Mr. Puddefoot is not deeply disturbed to find 
himself at variance, on many points, with his 
brethren. That variance began early in life. 
The boy often expelled from Sunday school for 

[ix] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

insisting that the world was not made in six cal- 
endar days is now the man of seventy, still in- 
sisting that some things may be true which the 
present age is as slow to accept as the Sunday 
schools of sixty years ago were slow to believe 
the testimony of the rocks. 

Such an attitude provokes controversy, but no 
controversy has made Mr. Puddefoot a dogma- 
tist; no discussion, however warm, has left his 
heart less tender or brotherly. Yet it would be 
against nature to suppose that the little heretic 
of ten, who has lived to see the whole Christian 
world converted to his theory of creation, should 
not take courage and hope from such an event 
and a certain faith in the future, which prompts 
his frequent good-natured reply to his doubting 
friends: "Wait and see!" "Wait and see!" 

A unique man, gifted with fine abilities and 
yet finer faiths — a man with the heart of a boy 
and the vision of a seer — an optimist, because 
a Christian, looking always for new heavens and 
a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness — 
"a fellow of infinite jest" and of infinitely seri- 
ous purpose — a lover of nature and of art, but 
no less a lover of his brother man — an ardent 
seeker after new light, but never getting by the 
North Star — rare master of assemblies who 
never lacked a hearing — transparently simple by 
nature — sine cera in thought, word and deed — 
a lovable man — the ideal friend. 



M 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

I. My Ancestry and Early Yeaks 

II. I Go to London . 

III. Boyhood Days in England . 

IV. In My Merry and Busy Teens 
V. The Voyage and Settlement in Canada 

VI. First Adventures in a New World . 

VI I. I Become a Rover .... 

VIII. Old-Time Revivals and Camp Meetings 

IX. My Religious Experience . 

X. Still a Rover — Restless and Mischievous 

XI. How I Became a Minister . 

XII. Some Memories of the Pastorate 

XIII. A City Mission 

XIV. The General Missionary . . . 
XV. My Avocations ..... 

XVI. Earlier Experiences .... 

XVII. God's Country 

XVIII. Triflino Incidents that Led to Something 

XIX. My Contact with Drummond, Archbishop Ire 
land and Brierley ..... 

XX. The Strange Power of Words ... 

XXI. What I Know about Audiences and Books . 

XXII. Watchman, What of the Night? 
[xi] 



PAGE 

vii 



15 
23 
83 
42 
51 
59 
68 
76 
86 
94 
104 
118 
120 
128 
188 
146 
156 

164 
176 
185 
194 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of W. G. Ptjddefoot 

Henry Andrews the Astronomer 

The Village Green, Westerham, Kent, Eng. 

The House Where General Wolfe Was Born 

View of Westerham Church and the Home of Mr 
Puddefoot ....... 

Mr. Puddefoot Before He Entered the Ministry 
Portrait of Mrs. Puddefoot .... 

Mr. Puddefoot's Home in Framingham 



Frontispiece 

PAGE 

4 



12 



100 
152 
166 



[xliij 



LEAVES FROM THE LOG OF A SKY 
PILOT 



CHAPTER I 

MY ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 

Let me say at once that although English 
born I care less than a fig for genealogy. I have 
no doubt that I came straight through from the 
dawn of life. I am convinced there was no spe- 
cial creation in our family and I take Emerson's 
words straight: 

"I am owner of the sphere, 
The seven stars and solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 

There is nothing to boast of in this, for does 
not the blood of Judas, Jezebel and all the riff- 
raff since the planet started making humans 
come in, too? Sure! And at times it seems as 
if I had the whole crew at work in me. 

My father was the first and only radical in 
the family. He belonged to the party of Cob- 
den and Bright and, so far as I can remember, 
was the only tradesman in our village that was 
not a Tory. His father died before I was born, 
and from what I know of him, which came from 
my own father, he was what in these times would 
be called a "sport." 

[8] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

My grandmother on my father's side was a 
remarkable woman. I remember her sitting up 
in bed, when past eighty, arguing with my father 
on politics. My grandfather's family came from 
Proudfoot. Captain Proudfoot of the King's 
Guards married Jennie Cameron of the Clan 
Cameron, who had a child by King James, and 
from that child our own family came on my 
father's side. 

On my mother's side I had a great-grand- 
father who was an astronomer and official cal- 
culator to the Board of Longitude. He was the 
author of many curious books and had a large 
correspondence with scientific men. 

My mother was the most Christlike woman I 
ever knew, but very timid. Her whole life was 
bound up in her husband and children, four of 
whom she lost when they were very young. 
Timid as she was physically, she would have gone 
to the stake on a question of morals. I know 
that she kept a fine piece of satin uncut for years 
because my father had won it by a bet. Betting 
was very common in those days and rarely rec- 
ognized as a snare of the devil. Few only, like 
my mother, with quickened moral sense, were 
ready to protest against the practice as a vice. 

Such, briefly told, is the story of my forebears 
for two generations. Back of that I know little 
and, as already confessed, care little. Whatever 
good they bequeathed to me, I accept with 
thanks; whatever of evil I cheerfully forgive, 

[4] 




Henry Andrews 

Astronomical Calculator to the Board of Longitude 

and the Celebrated Author of 

Moore's Almanack 



My Ancestry and Early Tears 

since in all probability they rather than I will 
have to answer for it. Be that as it may, nothing 
can now alter the fact that with a full comple- 
ment of inherited tendencies, good and bad, I 
was born in Westerham, Kent, England, May 
31, 1842 — which seems longer ago than it ought 
to. 

It may seem incredible to the reader, as it was 
to my mother, that I have a clear recollection 
of events in my life at the age of eighteen 
months. But as I told her things that no one 
could have told me, she had to admit that I 
remembered them. 

I was taken by my nurse to an infant school 
kept by Miss Payne. It was a grand old brick 
pile with quaintly-shaped tiles on its many- 
gabled roof. It was surrounded by a brick wall, 
the top of which was so round that it was impos- 
sible for the boys to get hold or climb over. 

As I was the youngest child in the school I 
was the pet, and the little girls fairly fought to 
see who should have the baby at recess, and 
tugged at my arms until I cried out. But one 
day I got even with them by spilling a bottle of 
ink over a shirt one of them was making for her 
brother. An accident, of course ! but I was tied 
to the table leg and at noon my nurse was told, 
"Miss Payne's compliments to Mrs. Puddefoot, 
but she cannot take charge of Master Puddefoot 
as he runs the whole school." I believe I am the 
youngest graduate of that school. 

[*] . i 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

I have very vivid memories of the old market 
town and its environments. The house in which 
I was born was not old — that is, not more than 
three hundred years. It had a square front and 
behind the front a roof of many peaks. Our 
dining-room had an immense fireplace, so large 
that we could go under the mantel and sit down 
on seats arranged on either side. Looking up 
we could see flitches of bacon and hams, and 
beyond them the stars. On either side were cup- 
boards that met at the back of the chimney. 

My father had a window built which ran across 
the whole width of the room and looked into the 
garden. A high garden wall ran for a short 
distance down the walk and on the top of the 
wall was a fine bust of Venus. 

I must have had a vigorous constitution, for 
although I caught most of the children's diseases 
as others caught them, they passed over me 
lightly — some of them skipping me altogether, 
which was a source of regret, for I wanted all 
that were going. I remember waking early one 
morning and finding myself covered with red 
spots, which pleased me mightily. I waked 
my eldest brother to show him my new spots, 
"Why," said he, "you have the measles." I 
jumped out of bed, as he supposed, to show my 
mother. But I pulled off my nightgown and 
ran out into the garden. A heavy white frost 
was on the ground. I ran capering down the 
walk, shouting to the neighbors to see the spotted 

[6] 



My Ancestry and Early Years 

leopard. My mother, in an agony of fear, was 
after me with one of the servants. It took some 
time to catch me, but when I was caught, my 
mother gave me first treatment which brought 
out some new red spots that were not measles. 

For books I had a small collection filled with 
pictures, one of them a natural history which I 
never tired of looking at. Most of the notes 
were by Cuvier and Buffon. I must have been 
a strange compound of noise and quiet — sitting 
by the hour and watching the great clouds sail 
by or the gradual deepening of the twilight. I 
can remember the smell of the road after a sum- 
mer tempest and how I delighted in the crash 
of the thunder and yet would go down on my 
knees and talk to the violets. 

Once I found myself back of "The George and 
Dragon" and was tempted to throw a stone at 
a bantam cock. After several trials I hit him 
and then swore my first oath. It startled me. 
I looked up in the sky, expecting to see God's 
eye — but the sky was serenely blue — and then 
I let loose all the swear words I could remember 
with such energy that a poor woman who was 
passing on the London Road looked up in amaze- 
ment. The reaction came and I felt that I was 
a lost soul. I had been told so repeatedly, but 
now the dreadful thought took hold of me. My 
mother belonged to the Independents, and their 
religion, as dispensed in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, was not of the comforting kind. 

[7] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

But my father was a broad man, and his words 
on religious subjects were caught up and treas- 
ured by me. 

My first evening outdoors after supper I shall 
never forget. I cannot describe its wild tumult 
of pleasure — the subtle influence of the long twi- 
light, the sense of freedom, the game of fox and 
hounds — I the fox, the other boys the hounds. 
I was fat and a poor runner, but how I enjoyed 
it ! the rush through the paddock, the dash down 
Meadows Mead, the hiding in the churchyard, 
and when almost caught, slipping into the dark 
entry of a poor man's house, the rush of the 
hounds as they passed by, my quiet walk home 
and the convulsive hug of my mother, who re- 
joiced at my victory and safe return. 

My father was high constable, overseer of 
the poor, highway rate collector and a church 
warden. One paper came to him each week 
addressed, "George Puddefoot, Agent." It was 
the Sussex Express, and in my innocence I used 
to read the address, "George Puddefoot, A 
Gent" and was greatly exalted thereby, for we 
had "gentry," "common tradesmen" and "the 
poor." But my father was more than "a gent." 
He was one of God's noblemen. Every Tues- 
day and Thursday through the winter I was sent 
to the homes of the very poor to invite them to 
bring their pails to our house; then would my 
father stand beside the huge copper boiler, filled 
with rich beef soup, and ladle their cans brimful. 

[8] 



My Ancestry and, Early Tears 

While strict in discipline, he was always kind 
and companionable with his children. In the 
winter evenings he would gather us around the 
big fireplace. The shutters were closed, the bar 
that held them thrown across and the pinner 
fastened. The chintz curtains, hanging from a 
semi-circle of iron rods, were drawn around us 
to shut off the draught, and there gazing into the 
fireplace piled up with blazing roots of trees, he 
would bid us watch the soldiers, as he called the 
sparks. 

So good a father ought to have had a better 
son than I, for I remember once when my mother 
had company she found me throwing her best 
china up that same chimney. Once I set fire 
to the house because my brother angered me and 
then, catching up the cat, dropped her over the 
banisters to see if it were true that cats always 
fell on their feet. The mewing of the cat roused 
the family and saved the house. I was put to 
bed without ceremony. Luckily my father was 
away and I escaped the awful thrashing which 
comes before the softening influence of time. 

Was I a tender-hearted boy? I think so; yet 
twice I did a mean, cruel trick, pushing Georgie, 
my playmate, into the river for no reason at all, 
and doing the same to my real chum, Newton 
Brand, moved both times by what seemed to me 
an irresistible impulse. What sea pirate be- 
queathed me that satanic impulse? and could it 
have been I that set fire to the heather which 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

ruined a valuable fir plantation? The Lord of 
the Manor offered £50 for the arrest of the mis- 
creant, and I overheard my father telling Mother 
that he was hot on his scent. Ah, had he known 
it he was hot indeed ! Years after, when we were 
in Canada and Mother in her grave, I told him 
and he almost fainted. 

By this time I was ten years old and going 
to a "man's school" — a man who thrashed me 
twice a day and told my mother how he loved 
me. "I wish he would hate me, then," I said. 
The school was kept in the very house where I 
was born, for we had moved to another and a 
better home. 

Sometimes the master would make me hold a 
piece of oak above my head or lock me into the 
very pantry where, as a boy of five, I used to 
eat the ends of the candles as far as I could reach 
on tiptoe. He was a good man for the times 
and even merciful compared with some other 
masters, who pounded the boys' heads against 
heavy posts. Once at least he made a mistake. 
Creeping up behind me, just as I had made up 
my mind to be a good boy, he gave me a fearful 
cut which caused me to cry out, "You fool, you!" 
He saw he was wrong; something in my eye 
told him that. 

"Never mind now, Master Puddefoot. We 
will let that go for the next time." I squared 
the account within an hour and we both laughed. 

But not all our whippings were laughing mat- 

[10] 



My Ancestry and. Early Years 

ters. They were so severe that the lady living 
next door to the school would beg the master 
to flog his boys in another room — their cries 
made her so unhappy. Yes, Solomon's rod was 
profoundly reverenced in my boyhood, and be- 
cause it seemed to have Scriptural sanction, it 
was held to be a cure-all for youthful depravity 
of every form. If whipping makes good boys, 
surely we ought to have become angels, but to 
the best of my recollection quite the opposite was 
true. 

On Saturdays I was often invited to the vic- 
arage to play with a young lad of my own age 
who was not allowed to play with the village 
boys. How well I can see that vicarage, with 
its well-kept close, the great yew tree with its 
scarlet berries, the halls and rooms lined with 
books, the listed doors that closed without noise 
and the shy boy, who seemed to be listed like 
the doors. 

I must have been a vociferous lad, for the 
schoolmaster, taking tea at our house on the eve 
of emigrating to Australia, so stirred me with 
stories of the antipodes, that I shouted with 
delight. "Dear, dear," said the poor man, "if 
that boy lives to be twenty he will have voice 
enough to address ten thousand people." Forty 
years later I thought of that when I stood before 
an audience of ten thousand and proved the old 
man a prophet. 

Can a boy ever forget his first fish? My older 

[ii] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

brother took me with him to a stream near Hever 
Castle. Boylike I flung my line in a way to put 
every fish to flight, yet with boy's luck, pulled 
out a big trout and sent it two rods over my head. 
"We shall have great sport," said my brother; 
but that was the only fish that morning. Later 
we found a perch pond where the fish bit so 
eagerly that I did nothing but cut bait — for my 
brother. 

But the memory of that day! My first fish* 
Hever Castle, Henry the Eighth and Anne 
Boleyn, the long walk home in the twilight — ■ 
it is a golden picture to this hour in my memory. 

Sometimes on Sundays my father would take 
me to walk; through Spring Shaws, where the 
Darent takes its rise from seven springs, past 
the old dogmill which once ground food for the 
hounds, along the walk slippery with fallen 
beech mast, past the great tulip tree, and the 
quiet reaches where immense speckled trout, con- 
scious of their safety, would leap for the flies. 
Then we would meet the keeper, with a brace 
of hounds and a rifle slung over his shoulder, 
and he would put on a grave look and talk of 
trespassing. I would look into my father's face 
with alarm, but I soon saw that it was a joke, 
and that the high constable was a privileged 
person. 

Poaching was common. Poor men would risk 
liberty and life for a hare or leveret, and with 
good reason, for many of them lived on bread 

[12] 




The Village Green, Westerham, Kent 
"My First Playground" 




The Birthplace of General Wolfe 



My Ancestry and Early Tears 

and boiled turnip tops for weeks together, with- 
out the taste of meat. One desperate poacher 
was so feared that the metropolitan policeman 
left him alone though sent with instructions to 
take him. One day this poacher and my father 
met; then I saw the effect of kindness and the 
winter soup. Said the man : "I know, Mr. Pud- 
defoot, you have a warrant out for me. Give 
me the warrant and I will commit myself and 
save you twenty miles of travel." And so he 
did, and went to Maidstone alone! 

And now the leaven of what little I had read 
began to ferment. I had been down a coal mine 
with Dickens in Household Words, and seen 
trees a million years old and I must needs air 
my newfound knowledge in the Sunday school 
class. I thought to extend the bounds of knowl- 
edge, but my teacher, who looked upon all Bible 
dates as inspired, took a different view and re- 
garded me with horror. I was threatened with 
expulsion and given another chance; but leaven 
when it once begins to work is hard to check, and 
a boy of ten is too young to be a coward or hypo- 
crite. I could not believe the story of creation 
and could not be silent, and hence it happened 
that under the pretense of being a mischievous 
boy, but really for heresy, I found it convenient 
to absent myself from Sunday school at the age 
of ten. I left suddenly — in fact, I was expelled. 

Such are a few of my memories of a childhood 
that was sheltered and happy beyond the lot of 

[13] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

many — blessed by the presence of a loving, 
saintly mother, of a wise, just, broad- visioned 
father, safeguarded in a home of comparative 
comfort and plenty, lacking but never missing 
the pride of wealth and pomp of social prestige 
— a domestic garden in which, like its old-fash- 
ioned flowers, I was let grow as God made me 
to grow, with little restraint save that of love and 
only such pruning as I needed and for which I 
am now and forever grateful. 

The village in which I was born has parted 
with its charm for me. It is not deserted like 
Goldsmith's village. Far from it and far worse ! 
For the East Londoner comes in his big van, or 
in one of its sixteen daily trains, and makes hid- 
eous what was once so calm, so sweet, so bright. 
The charm has fled. It has become cosmopoli- 
tan. But to me it is a memory, sacred and sweet, 
and to that memory I dedicate this opening 
chapter. 



[14] 



CHAPTER II 
I GO TO LONDON 

When I was about ten years old an uncle 
who was a Scripture reader in London paid our 
family a visit and recommended a boarding 
school there to my parents. It professed to fit 
boys for any trade or vocation and seemed to 
be just the place for me. I was sure of it my- 
self, for it meant London. 

It was called The Westbourne School. The 
headmaster was allowed to take twelve boarders, 
most of whom were proteges of ladies or children 
of widows living on small annuities. It was not 
exactly a "Dotheboys Hall," but it was one of 
that kind, only a trifle less cruel. My mother 
went with me as far as London Bridge, but 
beyond that point I had many miles further to 
go before reaching the School, and I wonder 
now, looking back, how my timid mother ever let 
me go the rest of the way alone. 

I was given, a sixpence for not crying when I 
left home by a Mrs. Richards who lived next 
door to us. I had directions from my mother 
to get off at the Royal Oak and then walk a 
mile and a half to Victoria Terrace. 

By that time it was evening and I shall never 

[15] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

forget the awed feeling as I walked up the stone 
steps into what seemed to me one of the many 
mansions. The master who met me was a canny- 
Scotchman, with one child of his own and two 
nieces, and I was made to think I was extremely 
lucky to get in, as there was just room for one 
more boarder. 

My room was at the top of the house in the 
front garret; six little iron bedsteads and a 
wash-stand were the only furniture. Chairs were 
not needed, as we had our trunks to sit upon. 
This was the boarding house, but the school was 
a mile away across the brick fields; beyond the 
brick fields were the dairy farms and the open 
country. It was not exactly the London I had 
pictured. A canal ran near the schoolhouse; 
also the Great Western Railway, with the widest 
tracks ever built, and even then it was running 
locomotives at sixty miles an hour. One of these 
monster engines, The Lord of the Isles, I saw 
at Chicago at the World's Fair in 1893, and it 
seemed to me as good as ever. 

For exercise we had high poles, set on a swivel, 
with hanging ropes and chains and around these 
poles we whirled at a great rate. Part of the 
playground was fenced for a garden, where the 
boarders studied botany in summer, but we did 
not have to weed this garden, as Mr. Squeers' 
boys did, according to Dickens, "when the frost 
was so hard that the pump stuck fast." 

We had an underground playground for rainy 

[16] 



I Go to London 

weather, the school being built on brick piles, and 
at one side lived an old man and his wife, who 
were allowed to sell taffy bull's-eyes and lolly- 
pops to the boys. Many a bull's-eye the old lady 
gave me because my rosy cheeks and plump 
hands made her think of her early home. 

At this time I was very stout and big for my 
age and needed to be, for there were over three 
hundred scholars and I had a round dozen of 
fights just to find out who was who. Still I was 
no real fighter, knowing nothing of boxing, but 
was not deficient in courage. Before leaving 
home I had fought one big fellow with one hand 
while I held the papers I had to distribute on 
Saturday in the other. I might have had a bad 
flogging for this had not a neighbor followed me 
home and told my father that I was in the right. 

I never fought except when forced to, and I 
received many blows for each one I gave, but 
I aimed to make that one a settler and, as a rule, 
it was. My humorous side kept me out of many 
fights, and I was a favorite with most of the 
boys. I could tell them stories to which they 
would rather listen than play marbles, and at 
the boarding house on wet Saturdays I painted 
woodcuts for them all day. 

Our meals were small, too small for growing 
boys. More than once I picked up orange peel 
and devoured it to satisfy my hunger. For 
breakfast we had a round and a quarter of bread 
and a mug of coffee; for lunch just a round of 
[17] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

bread and no more. Six o'clock found us hungry 
as hounds for the dinner which was good for 
quality but quite insufficient in quantity. The 
big plum pudding was always welcome, because 
it was so filling. Often and often I traded my 
marbles with the day scholars for a piece of pie. 
The period between dinner and bedtime was 
given to study. At the close of each school day 
I generally went to the top of the class, because 
the last exercise was parsing, which I found easy, 
but during most of the day I was at the foot 
for talking, which was even easier. 

I was the only boy in school who was studying 
Latin, and it was lonesome work and did not 
amount to much. Nearly every Saturday we 
were taken to Westminster Abbey by a pupil- 
teacher who had a mania for copying inscrip- 
tions from tombstones. The boys hated it and 
would rather have played leap-frog any time. 
Once we went to see the House of Lords, and 
I was into the "throne seat" before any one could 
haul me back. The look of horror on the teach- 
er's face and the stern words from the man in 
charge made me laugh outright, for which I had 
my ears boxed. I never cared for dignitaries or 
pomp. Once when Napoleon, Eugenie, Prince 
Albert and the Queen went by in a carriage I 
stuck to my game. I don't think I would have 
run a mile when a boy to have seen all the 
crowned heads of Europe; and this feeling has 
never left me. I detest man worship. 

[18] 



/ Go to London 

It seems strange that I never mentioned the 
way we lived at school when I went home for 
the holidays. The joy of going home, I sup- 
pose, made me forget it. When money was sent 
to me I spent most of it for bread and cheese 
and divided with my roommates. This low liv- 
ing brought on influenza and scurvy and it was 
many months before I became free from their 
bad effects. Indeed, I was thirty before the 
marks of scurvy left me. The master was fright- 
ened and gave me money to go out and see if 
the cookshops would not tempt my appetite. 
Once a month I dined with my Uncle Clark, and 
I remember when I was strong enough to go 
how I longed for a shoulder of mutton roasted 
over a batter pudding and browned potatoes. 
When the day came my uncle had the very dish 
I had longed for, and then I could not eat it. 

That winter the snow was remarkable for a 
county that scarcely ever had any snow but for 
a day. It was four feet deep on the level and 
the people were taken from the poorhouses to 
clear the roads to London. I remember some 
small patches left until the first of June, north 
of the hedge rows, the dense foliage protecting 
them. Before the leaves had grown the sun 
would produce a replica of the quickset hedge 
in snow, and a very beautiful sight it was. 

On going back for my last term our home 
doctor ordered more food and a glass of beer 
for dinner, for which my father paid extra. This 

[19] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

fare was kept up two weeks and the price of it 
three months. Glad was I when one evening 
my eldest brother called to take me home for 
good. I was then thirteen. 

My school days are not a very pleasant mem- 
ory. In the Sunday school connected with the 
day school my teacher used to pull my ears and 
rap my head against the next boy's. I'm afraid 
I hated that man. He did not understand boys. 
But there was another who did. One Sunday a 
dashing major just home from India came into 
the school and was given my class to teach. I 
wondered much that a great officer should stoop 
to this. He took his seat, gave a rapid look at 
the class and said, as he fixed his eyes on me, "I 
make you captain." That fixed me. I had to 
be good then. "Here," said he, "is a sixpence 
for sweets. Don't spend it on Sunday, Captain, 
but tomorrow divide with the class." One day 
I heard him say to the superintendent, pointing 
to me, "That boy's my hope." The superin- 
tendent gave a doubtful shrug which hurt a 
little, but the Major's words stayed by me. 

I don't think two days went by in my school 
life without a whipping; not because I deserved 
it always, but because it was the fashion. Boys 
were whipped most brutally. The master used 
a short ash ruler and when we held out our hands 
we fairly cowered before the blow, and in our 
hearts was murder. Such cruelty led to lying. 
I remember one night we were smoking when 

[20] 



I Go to London 

we heard the master coming up. I hastily- 
knocked the tobacco out of my pipe, swished the 
soap about in the water and began to blow bub- 
bles. But the master smelled the smoke. 

"What's this?" he said, "smoking?" 

"No, we were blowing bubbles with an old 
pipe and it's awful strong." 

That was an awful lie, surely, but such was 
my fear of him that though a Christian-trained 
boy, I lied like an Oriental heathen and with 
such conviction that the master turned and went 
down. The only comment of the boys was, "My ! 
but that was a close call!" 

If I learned little else at Westbourne I did 
become a master at sneaking and deceit. My 
London brother was married at this time and 
all the tips I got I spent for cakes, wine and 
bread and cheese. These I smuggled up to our 
room, and when the house was quiet I pulled the 
beds together and by means of a broom rigged 
the bedclothes up, tent-style, and we imagined 
we were Arabs in the desert and never stopped 
until the last crumb was swallowed and all the 
wine drunk. How it was we were not found 
out I never could imagine. 

And thus it happened that, at the too early 
age of thirteen, when other boys were beginning 
their education in earnest, I was done with all 
schools except one — the school of experience. 
Looking back on that period of my life it seems 
to me a wonder, a miracle of grace and divine 

[21] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

leading that with my small stock of self-knowl- 
edge and my bitter memory of wrongs, I did not 
grow up to become at last a menace to society 
and a dishonor to my Maker and my parents. 



[22] 



CHAPTER III 
BOYHOOD DAYS IN ENGLAND 

Nearly two decades after the friction match 
had been invented an old man used to stand on 
the corner of the London Road and the High 
Street, Westerham. His dress was of the old 
style. He had on knee breeches and garters, a 
gaberdine for a coat and a beaver hat brushed 
the wrong way to show that it was not silk. In 
his hands he held a bunch of matches. 

These matches were about six inches in length, 
about five-eighths of an inch broad, very thin 
and pointed at the ends. These ends had been 
dipped in brimstone, and as he stood he sang in 
a trembling, falsetto voice : 

"Come, buy my fine matches, 

Come, buy them of me. 
They are dry and barsell 

And all very good; 
Besides they are made 

Of the very best wood." 

What barsell meant I do not know, but there 
were people then as now who would not buy 
any new thing. I have heard my father say how 
often in days gone by, when sudden sickness 
came in the night, he had struck his knuckles 
with flint and steel to get a spark into the tinder 

[23] 



ft) 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

box, and then thrust in the match. Then he 
would run through the dark streets for the 
doctor. 

Tonight, if there is need, I pull the chain and 
my room is as light as day. I take down my 
telephone and call the doctor, and by the time 
I am dressed I hear his automobile at the door. 

When I was a boy there were four kinds of 
candles. The very poor burned rushlights, which 
cost a farthing each. A rush was used for the 
wick. Then we had eights, i. e., eight to the 
pound. The better class had sixes, and the shoe- 
maker and the tailor had double sixes, having 
two wicks. Of course the rich used wax candles. 
I saw the introduction of camphene lamps. 
These were followed by what was called portable 
gas, i. e., naphtha, and then in turn by gas from 
coal. All of these, lamps and gas, were intro- 
duced in our village by my father. The by- 
products that came from the gas were used to 
kill weeds, or by adding twelve gallons of water 
to the liquor it was used as a fertilizer. Today 
the by-products almost pay for the gas. 

My father used to get the naphtha in twenty- 
gallon cans, and when the cans were empty he 
returned them. One day he found a small hole 
in the top of the can and tried to stop it with 
melted sealing wax. The can promptly exploded 
and took off one side of his whiskers and the hair 
off one side of his head, besides blistering his 
skin. 

[24] 



Boyhood Days in England 

In May came the festival of the sweeps who 
were arrayed in fantastic garbs, one inclosed in 
evergreens with a space to show his face. This 
was about the only frolic these poor folks had. 

The first of May was May-bough day. The 
country boys, dressed in their Sunday best, in- 
vaded the town, with hazel boughs decked with 
cowslips, primroses and polyanthus. They would 
stop opposite each house and sing : 

"This the day, the first of May, 
Please remember the May-bough. Whoop!" 

The girls carried garlands made with two 
hoops crossed and ornamented with flowers. In- 
side was a doll. They sang: 

"This the day, the first of May, 
Please remember the garland." 

Then they curtsied. 

At the end of the village lived two old maiden 
ladies, the Misses Davetts, and here each boy and 
girl was given a penny. At noon all assembled 
in front of the nurseryman's shop and he would 
throw out some two or three bushels of hazel 
nuts, for which the youngsters scrambled. 

All this was to make ready for the third of 
May, which was the yearly fair. The night be- 
fore the gipsies would arrive and begin to raise 
their tents. In the morning was the cattle-show. 
By noon the streets were cleared and the fun 
would begin in earnest, with roundabouts, swings, 
Womball's menagerie, the learned pig Toby, 

[25] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

giants and dwarfs, country bumpkins grinning 
through a horse collar and bobbing for oranges 
floating in a tub of water. Another lot vied 
with each other in quick eating of hot hasty pud- 
ding. Fortune-telling by the gipsies and often 
a donkey race w r ould be introduced. The last 
donkey won the prize. As each rider exchanged 
donkeys, the effort was made by every one to 
beat his own donkey. 

At another season came the General Wolfe 
Fair, in honor of the conqueror of Quebec, who 
was born in Westerham. Men would climb 
greasy poles, catch greased pigs, and old women 
would wade through Long Pond for a new shift. 

The lumber-room in my father's house was a 
veritable mine of treasures. Stowed away in it 
was almost every conceivable article — old bel- 
lows with brass noses, great-grandfather's big 
telescope and microscope, books, pictures, old 
mahogany boxes, etc. Here I was put when I 
was a bad boy and became acquainted with every- 
thing in the room. It was a pleasurable punish- 
ment. One day I managed with a file to cut a 
key to fit the largest of the boxes and found a 
guinea, a sovereign, several half-sovereigns and 
crooked sixpences, groats and threepenny bits, 
also a twopenny copper piece which was after- 
wards used as a two-ounce weight. Before that 
there were threepenny bits that weighed three 
ounces. The old crown was a five-shilling piece. 
One new coin was introduced when I was a boy. 

[26] 



Boyhood Days in England 

It was named a florin and was worth two 
shillings. 

I read everything I could find, even to Dr. Ure 
on the cotton industry of England. Milton's 
"Paradise Lost" filled me with loud-sounding 
words that I did not know how to pronounce, 
much less did I understand their meaning. I 
found one book that was a prize — Marryat's 
"Pirate and Three Cutters." I was so absorbed 
in this book that I stayed long beyond my time 
and my father suddenly opened the door to see 
that I was not in mischief — for I had spoiled 
two of the clocks my grandfather made to get 
the wheels for a wagon. When he saw me with 
a book he said : 

"What is that you are reading?" 
"Oh, it is splendid!" I said. 
"Let me see it. Why, it's a novel!" 
"Well, is it not true?" 

I cannot describe my sorrow at finding that 
anything written should not be true. I did not 
then know that in ancient times writings were 
thought to be sacred; I only know that it was 
a long time before I got over my grief. 

No big words worried me. I made an attempt 
once in reading out loud about the gigantic abo- 
rigines of Patagonia at pronouncing the word 
"gigantic." I used the hard sound of g, and 
called the aborigines the abrogeens. "What?" 
said my father in a voice that made me jump. 
I pronounced the words again, and my father 
[27] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

laughed as he told me the right pronunciation. I 
never forgot it. In fact, every time that I have 
pronounced a word wrong I can remember the 
place and the person who set me right. 

The old burying ground was our favorite 
playground, for here were tombstones of all 
heights over which we played leapfrog. Some- 
times when the sexton unearthed an old skull 
we used it to play ball with. Many graves were 
filled until no more bodies would go in. In St. 
Johns Wood the graves were ten or more bodies 
deep. These graveyards are now flower gardens. 

It was a superstition among us boys that if 
we went round the church twelve times and 
touched every corner we should see the devil 
looking out of the vestry window. One night 
we had gone round some five or six times and 
on looking in at the vestry window we were sur- 
prised and scared half to death, for old man 
Weller, the clerk, poked his head out. We tum- 
bled over the vaults and tombstones at a fearful 
gait. When the old clerk died his daughter took 
me to see him and told me to touch his face so 
that I should not dream about him. 

When I was a boy I had to keep a large stone 
j ar filled with water from the town pump. The 
well was deep and it was hard work to pump it. 
I had a yoke that went over my shoulders from 
which hung chains that had hooks for the pails. 
The washing water came from the river Darenth. 
which ran at the foot of Water Lane. 

[28] 



Boyhood Days in England 

At the bottom of the lane there were stone 
steps. With great difficulty I dislodged one of 
the stones and knocked off the back part of it 
so making a little cupboard, in which I hid a 
pipe, tobacco and matches, for I had learned to 
smoke when eleven years of age. In fact, there 
was not a road leading out of Westerham where 
I did not have a hidden store for "my lady nico- 
tine." Sometimes my mother suspected me and 
asked me to give her a kiss. I said, "In a min- 
ute," dashed into the garden and ate an onion. 
"You naughty boy," she said. 

Our garden was filled with delicious fruit — 
damsons, great greengages, cherries of black 
hearts, gooseberries as large as walnuts and black 
currants the size of small marbles, elderberry 
trees, and all kinds of flowers. We never stored 
any of the garden stuff in cellars — we did not 
need to. We cut the celery, dug the potatoes 
and when we cut off a cabbage head we split 
the stalk and from this would grow the nicest 
crisp little cabbage heads. This garden was my 
favorite place on Sunday afternoon when not 
walking with my father. 

Let me tell of one thing more — the Shilling 
Post. Three years before I was born people had 
to pay very high for postage. Frederic Harri- 
son speaks of the widow of a member of Parlia- 
ment who used to frank their letters for them 
and save some eighteenpence. 

The people evaded these high rates. When 

[29] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

John Smith was going to London, to let Mrs. 

John know he was safe he would address his 

letter to 

Mr. J. S. All well, 
Care of Mrs. John Smith, 

Westerham, Kent. 

The postman would say, "There is a shilling 
due." Mrs. Smith said, "I do not want it." She 
had the information in the address. Rowland 
Hill stopped all this when he introduced the 
penny postage. When I lived in Framingham 
I had an eleven-pound parcel of shrubs and flow- 
ers sent by the Westerham Nursery for less 
money than a letter cost in my boyhood going 
to any part of England beyond a hundred miles. 

Many old customs were in full fling when I 
was a boy that are now forgotten. The fifth 
of November was one of them. At that time 
the boys would bring hop vines enough to make 
a bonfire higher than the houses. This was made 
in the middle of the village green and so great 
was the heat that the fat melted from the beef 
hung in the butcher's shop behind heavy wooden 
shutters. The boys shouted: 

"November ! November ! 
The fifth of November, 
The gunpowder treason and plot. 
I don't see no reason 
Why gunpowder treason 
Should ever be forgot. 
Hurrah !" 

[30] 



Boyhood Days in England 

It was a wild and dangerous night and I was 
not allowed outside. Many boys and men were 
seriously burned when squibs held against them 
as they ran often made dangerous wounds. An 
act of Parliament stopped all this wild fun and 
I remember how vexed I was when my father 
as High Constable ordered the boys to take away 
the hop vines. 

In those days we had a daily stage coach to 
London, excepting Sundays, and two huge car- 
rier vans that went twice a week, one putting 
up at the Half Moon borough, the other at St. 
Catherine's Wheel. The great horse in the van 
could draw five tons. Following the hind wheel 
was a little wheel which was attached by chains 
to the hub of the wheel, so that whenever the 
van stopped in going up a steep hill the hind 
wheel fell back on the little one. If we went by 
rail we had to walk to Edenbridge and took the 
train for London nearly six miles farther from 
London than when we started. Today there are 
sixteen daily trains from Westerham. 

The bounds of the parish were marked every 
eleven years, and a number of boys accompanied 
their elders so that there would be some to take 
the place of those who died. All sorts of tricks 
were played with the boys, such as putting them 
in a sack and rolling them into a stream. I was 
the only boy in my company and nothing was 
done to me except lifting me up and bumping 
me gently against a giant oak at Cudham. At 

[81] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

each of the boundaries a large W was chiseled 
into a tree. We met many companies from adja- 
cent towns. I walked twenty-one miles the first 
day, over hedges and ditches ; and sixteen miles 
the next. 

In one case we went right through the mansion 
of Mr. Bailey, the richest commoner then in 
England. To me the trip was delightful beyond 
expression. Once I found a thrush's nest in a 
wattled fence and gazed at the eggs with intense 
pleasure but did not touch them. I do not think 
walking the bounds is kept up today. I remem- 
ber we passed one field that contained one hun- 
dred acres. It was most irregular in shape, 
sometimes narrowed to a few rods. It showed 
how the early farmers fought with nature, man 
here gaining and there losing ground. It was 
reckoned that England had one hundred thou- 
sand miles of useless hedgerows and that if it 
were cultivated with the scientific skill of the 
Hollanders it could support one hundred million 
of people. 

For inns we had in Westerham a Tom and 
Jerry, which sold beer, the Grasshopper Inn, St. 
George and The Dragon, The King's Arms, The 
Ward Arms and The General Wolfe. 






[82] 



CHAPTER IV 
IN MY MERRY AND BUSY TEENS 

School days were over for me, and in my 
thirteenth 5~ear I stood face to face with the 
world. All trades were open, for thus far I had 
developed no marked tastes to guide my parents 
or myself in a choice. Near my father's home 
was a carpenter's shop and in the carpenter's 
family was a daughter for whom I had a boy's 
fondness; we had been playmates and had ex- 
changed vows of fidelity. In all our games we 
had been loyal comrades and we expected to be 
so forever. 

Thus the choice of a trade was made easy. I 
was duly bound; the indentures were made by 
which I was apprenticed for seven years. Al- 
though the shop was very near to my home, 
I became an "indoor" apprentice, costing my 
father over £150 sterling. But alas for love's 
young dream ! A big, ugly, pock-marked fellow 
came to town who could spend threepence at a 
time for candies, and the young damsel dropped 
me. Her younger sister appeared to take her 
place in my affections, but I refused to be com- 
forted. It was not my only lesson in the nckle- 

[38] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

ness of the fair sex before finding my true life 
companion. 

At the time when I began to learn my trade 
all the boards were cut at the shop. The square 
timbers were placed over a pit and two men, 
professional sawyers, cut the boards to the re- 
quired thickness. It was a slow, tedious process. 
My master (all bosses are called masters in Eng- 
land and, indeed, the husbands of the poor were 
always called masters by their wives) was a jack 
of many trades and a master of them all. Ke 
could do anything with tools from building a 
fence to making an organ. 

We started the work of the day at half-past 
six in the morning. Breakfast followed at eight, 
lunch at eleven and dinner at one. At six o'clock 
the day's work was done. The mechanics who 
lived in the next village brought their lunch with 
them and in the ten minutes allowed managed 
to consume their bread and cheese with a pint 
of small beer. Their comforts were few. For 
the most part they lived in cellars or down in 
the areas of tenement houses and received for 
wages about five dollars a week. 

All tradesmen in those days wore aprons. The 
carpenter's was plain white, fringed with white 
and was rolled up and twisted round the waist 
when he was not at work; the blacksmiths had 
leather aprons, the shoemakers striped linen and 
sometimes sheepskin; the grocers had white 
aprons, fastened with a small heart-shaped piece 

[84] 



In My Merry and Busy Teens 

of brass. Such distinctions made clanship nat- 
ural and easy. 

My master and I did not get along well to- 
gether. We were continually having words, and 
my unruly member was, even then, a source of 
trouble. One day I was carding horsehair and 
found my hands bleeding. I ventured to suggest 
that a roller turned with a handle would do the 
work easier and quicker than I was doing it. 
"Ah!" said he, "it takes a lazy boy to invent." 
I found out afterwards that such a machine had 
been made and that a lazy boy using it could do 
more in an hour than the smartest boy could do 
in a day by the old method. Still in spite of 
these differences I enjoyed the life. 

One day I had a forced half -holiday and I 
enjoyed it with fear and trembling — not but that 
holidays were frequent, sometimes a great cricket 
match or a donkey race gotten up by the gentry 
would be the occasion. Then the greater part of 
the village went to the commons. Great tents 
were pitched and a fine lunch provided for the 
players. Bands of music played between games 
and when "The Lords" came or "The Gentlemen 
of all England," then we all quit work and had 
a big time. 

But this particular half-holiday deserves a 
place by itself, as it was forced upon more than 
fifty men besides myself. A certain butcher who 
had to drive his beeves through his house to the 
slaughter pen had trouble with an ox that bolted 

[85] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

just as he reached the door. Fortunately for 
us, it was the dinner hour when the fun began. 
The bullock was frisky and game and fifty fel- 
lows armed with sticks who gave chase with 
whoops of delight failed to tranquilize him. I 
threw my stick, a long one, at the steer and he 
kicked it against a grocery window, but as it 
struck flat no glass was broken. 

Away went the ox and away went I. I was 
fortunate enough to capture the butcher's pony, 
which gave me a good start of the crowd until 
the pony and I and the ox were alone on the 
road. The ox, which by this time was mad, made 
a rush for us. I whipped over the fence in a 
jiffy and the pony was knocked over; had the 
brute's horns been straight the pony would have 
been ruined ; as it was, he gave the ox a parting 
kick with his heels and made for home. Efforts 
to lasso the animal were a failure. One man 
threw his plug hat down to attract the animal's 
attention, and it did, for he ran his horn through 
it and started down the road. An ox with a 
plug hat on his head made the people delirious 
with joy. After being twice wounded he was 
finally shot dead by the gamekeeper and the 
crowd dragged the dead body back to the slaugh- 
ter house. A great treat of beer followed, the 
crowd going in at one door and out through 
another. I managed to go in and out three times 
before I was discovered and then started hur- 
riedly for home, expecting the worst for my 

[86] 



In My Merry and Busy Teens 

forced holiday. But happening to tickle my 
master with the story of the hunt, I escaped 
without even a scolding. I would gladly have 
taken a licking rather than have lost that day of 
fun. 

Sometimes we worked miles away from home, 
lodging in some tavern or some country hamlet. 
How I loved to watch the clodhoppers after sup- 
per, when they would dance on the flagstone 
floor of the taproom with heavy nailed boots that 
weighed seven pounds a pair, and that after a 
hard day's work on the farm. At this time we 
were putting up a greenhouse for Darwin, whose 
name was not known then outside of scientific 
circles. I take pride in remembering my humble 
part in building Darwin's conservatory where he 
studied his famous chapter on Natural Selection. 

It was about this time that the Crimean War 
came to an end and England was wild with joy. 
It fell to me to rip out three hundred flagstaffs 
for the celebration, and that used me up. On 
our own village green we held a big feast ; barrels 
and barrels of ale were broached, and oxen and 
sheep roasted whole, while the tradesmen and 
gentry waited upon the poor. Trestles and 
benches were borrowed from the taverns for 
miles around to make tables and seats, and as 
the wagoners could neither write nor read, I had 
to go and mark all the borrowed articles with 
their owners' names. 

But when it came to cutting evergreens, the 

[87] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

call of the woods was too strong for me. I went 
off and left my job. That was a fatal truancy. 
My master was in high dudgeon. "Did the trees 
need marking, too?" he asked. I hung my head 
and had no answer. This brought on the quarrel 
that finished my apprenticeship, but such was 
the general delight in the return of peace that 
my father lost the money he had paid for me 
without a murmur. It was evident that I was 
not born to be a carpenter, and my indentures at 
the end of one year were canceled. 

My eldest brother at this time was working 
on the Atlantic Cable in London and I thought 
it would be a fine thing to work on the Cable, 
too. My uncle, who was timekeeper for the com- 
pany, got me a job to wind bobbins of copper 
wire and take out the kinks, making the wire 
ready for soldering. We used to get up at 5 
a. m., walk up Cheswell Street and past Bun- 
hill Fields, through places of great historic inter- 
est. An hour's walk brought us to the tavern, 
where we had hot coffee and ate our breakfast, 
which we had brought with us. It was nine at 
night when we reached home, too tired to un- 
dress, and sometimes I slept on the floor. For 
this work I receive $1.50 per week. 

At one time the Prince of Wales paid a visit 
to see the Cable made. I felt a contempt for the 
full-grown men, bowing and scraping before a 
boy like myself. I fear I am a poor English- 
man. Certainly I was never born to toady to 

[88] 



In My Merry and Busy Teens 

rank. My job on the Cable did not last long. 
One of the master mechanics invented a machine 
that did all the boys' work and we were dis- 
charged. Something over twenty inventions 
were born out of the making of this Cable. The 
great factory employed twelve fitters, eleven 
carpenters and two bricklayers. The last-named 
were Irishmen and very witty. While the Prince 
was on his visit the proprietor asked one of his 
bricklayers the day of the month. "And it plaze 
your Honor, if ye give me your watch I'll take 
it to a place where they put the date on a ticket 
for yez." Mike got a big tip for that. 

My parents had now removed from Wester- 
ham to London and lived on Upper Baker Street, 
near Regent's Park. I had found a position at 
Pickford & Co.'s great carrying establishment 
and was having a gentleman's life, reporting for 
business at nine o'clock and leaving at four. My 
work was light — only copying and posting let- 
ters — and I had a lovely walk to and fro across 
the Park. 

One day on my walk I had the pleasure of 
saving a woman from drowning. She had thrown 
herself into the water, but when it soaked 
through her clothes she screamed for help. I 
walked boldly into my father's shop, dripping 
wet, and he was ready to talk loud when he saw 
me ; but I stopped that with a wave of the hand. 
"I have just saved a woman from drowning." 
Then he was ready to make a hero of me. But 

[89] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

it was not much to do, for I was as good a swim- 
mer as any spaniel. 

My gentlemanly job soon failed me and I 
became an errand boy. No more short days! 
I had to be at the shop at seven, clean all the 
horses and run errands (sometimes twice a day 
to Lower Thames Street — twenty-four miles), 
but I loved it. I hated cleaning things, but I 
loved the walks through the great city. I knew 
every stone for miles, and I think I could have 
told what was in the shop windows from the 
Marble Arch to Temple Bar. And I knew all 
the short cuts — up an alley, through a bar- 
room into another alley and so save a quarter of 
a mile. 

I grieve to say that while in this business I 
fell into bad company, boys of my own age. We 
used to unscrew the brass knobs of house bells 
and shy them through the windows; of course 
the houses were new and unoccupied. Some- 
times I was nearly caught for I laughed so that 
I could not run until downright fear of the 
"bobby" at my heels made me scamper to cover. 
In later years I have met grave doctors of 
divinity who confessed to similar pranks at 
my age. Their confessions have been very 
comforting. 

It was at this time that my father, whose kind 
heart sometimes betrayed him, fell in with a 
pious rascal and I was sent to live with him. The 
business was made to appear double its real 

[40] 



In My Merry and Busy Teens 

value. My father became the partner of this 
designing rascal, and his losses and debts nearly 
ruined him. Meanwhile my brother had gone 
to Canada and sent back such rosy reports that 
we decided to follow him. 



f u 



CHAPTER V 

THE VOYAGE AND SETTLEMENT 
IN CANADA 

We joined the great army of emigrants, 
steamed away from Liverpool in March, 1859, 
and after thirteen days came into the port of 
New York with the Persia right after us, al- 
though she had left three days later than our 
vessel. She was the fastest ship afloat at that 
time and made the trip in about ten days. Our 
own ship, the Kangaroo, of 1,500 tons burden, 
I thought immense, though I had seen the Great 
Eastern lying at Blackwall before leaving. 

Those of my readers who have read Dickens's 
"American Notes" will remember his chagrin on 
seeing his stateroom. How as he recalled the 
highly colored lithograph he had seen in the 
agent's office in London and compared it with 
the actual article, he sat down on a horsehair 
slab and watched his friends' distorted counte- 
nances as they tried to make their faces small 
to get in at the door. That stateroom was a 
little box, but he had it all to himself. 

Now imagine the steerage. Before the anchor 
was weighed there were two or three large bar- 
rels of sea biscuit on deck free to all, but as soon 

[42] 



The Voyage and Settlement in Canada 

as we started they mysteriously disappeared. 
We had to furnish our own mattresses and we 
were laid in rows like so many herring. I 
had always lived in a good home and in the 
county of Kent, spoken of in Caesar's Commen- 
taries as the civilest place in the island, and now 
thrust amidst all sorts and conditions of men! 
I shall never forget the first dinner — the pota- 
toes with their jackets on; the meat in huge pieces 
thrown pellmell into large pans ; the great dirty 
hands thrust into the food; the men poising a 
potato on their half-shut hands much as an egg 
sets in an egg-cup, and then with a smart tap 
on top and a swift movement of the hand catch- 
ing the peeled potato underneath. 

I was a healthy young fellow of seventeen, 
but this scene took away my appetite. How- 
ever, I soon adjusted myself to the new condi- 
tions. I made acquaintance with the cook and 
by helping him with the cabin dinners I received 
in return many tidbits which I carried to my 
mother and younger brother. My mother was 
sick the whole way across, while I had an appe- 
tite of a young wolf and made five meals a day 
and when the weather was rough, six. 

There were terrible characters on board. One 
man who had tried to commit suicide when cross- 
ing the Pacific Ocean tried again on this trip, 
but was prevented and he had to be put in irons. 
An Irishman kept drunk nearly all the time and 
he would purposely annoy me by sitting close 

[43] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

to me and saying, "I would rather be hung in the 
United States than die a natural death in Eng- 
land." Another man of gigantic stature prayed 
half the night, wishing the ship would sink and 
he be drowned. One burly navvy from Lan- 
cashire said to him one night, "I tell thee, mate, 
you'll go to the devil quicker than that if thou 
doesn't shut up thy clatter." 

It was bad enough when the sea was smooth, 
but when the storm came and we were all bat- 
tened down and trunks were shot across the 
steerage floor at every roll and the odors of that 
middle passage made life almost unbearable, it 
did take some fortitude to stand the strain. 
Here was an old woman telling her beads — "O 
Mary, Mother of God, save me from my sins 
for Jesus' sake. Amen" ; and this repeated by 
the hour until it seemed as if pandemonium had 
broken loose. 

As the storm subsided the hatches were raised 
and men tried the deck. One old man came up 
to wash his breakfast tins, but foimd himself 
sitting on the deck and his soup plate clasped to 
his breast and the remains running down his 
body. The blank look on his face sent me into 
a spasm of laughter, but I quickly helped the 
old man to his feet and washed his tins and 
cleaned him up and so atoned for my untimely 
mirth. 

One day as we were crossing the Grand Banks 
I saw the captain throw his cigar away and in 

[44] 



The Voyage and Settlement in Canada 

an instant place a speaking trumpet to his 
mouth, for there, close enough to toss a biscuit 
on board, was a huge square-rigged bark. Had 
she struck us she would have smashed us like 
an eggshell. But as it was, the captain roared, 
"When did you leave New York?" "Day afore 
yesterday," was the answer, and she was lost in 
the soft fog as suddenly as she appeared. 

That day we passed icebergs as high as a house 
that came tumbling by us in the most rollicking 
manner. Toward sunset, miles away appeared 
an iceberg as large as a town. What a mag- 
nificent sight! The words of Wordsworth came 
to my mind : 

"The city now doth like a garment wear 
The beauty of the morning, silent, bare. 
Ships, towers, domes, theaters and temples lie 
Open unto the fields and to the sky." 

Only this was sunset and the f airy colors that 
came and transformed this mighty floe could only 
be described by the vision of the apocalyptic seer 
of the New Jerusalem. Night came on and then 
the fair vision floated out of sight and a dense 
fog shut us in. The wheels of the ship stopped. 
Her hoarse whistles echoed back from all quar- 
ters. "What does this mean?" I asked of an old 
tar. "It means icebergs, lad." Far down in the 
bottom of the ship I could hear the hammers 
of the engineers making repairs. Right glad 
was I when her wheels once more began to turn. 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

Next morning I was up early. The fogs were 
gone and the pure air of the new world was 
filling my lungs. But what a glad sound was 
that I heard as we neared Fire Island Light, 
"Land ahead!" and now with straining eyes we 
watched. The seagulls flew around us and the 
dolphins bared their backs of gold and oh, what 
rapture as we neared Staten Island! the deli- 
cate greens of the trees just faintly showing and 
the smell of Mother Earth; the landing at Castle 
Garden and the strange crowd that met us. 
What a chance for the churches of Lower New 
York, but they were blind! How many young 
girls and boys could they have saved at that early 
day, but they had no vision ! 

And now, if my memory serves me right, our 
train was drawn by horses from Canal Street to 
Twenty-second Street, when a little wood-burn- 
ing engine with an enormous smoke-stack backed 
down and was fastened to the train by two 
chains. The cars were much longer than Eng- 
lish cars. There were no draw bars in those 
days, and it was dangerous to pass from one car 
to another as the cars swayed to and fro. The 
rails were very light and our train at times 
seemed as if it would jump the track. There 
was a stove at either end, and in winter you could 
see the steam arising from the snow on the wood- 
box while little icicles formed on the other end 
of the stick. 

We stopped frequently to wood up. It took 

[46] 



The Voyage and Settlement in Canada 

two days to reach Buffalo, and we traveled over 
seven companies' roads. The conductor had 
nothing to distinguish him but a narrow leather 
band around his hat, which he put on when he 
reached the train. After we left the city large 
numbers of people paid on the cars, and I have 
heard that the conductors retired early in those 
days. It was years before I saw a conductor in 
uniform. I was in Windsor, Ontario, when this 
gorgeous creature came for the tickets. At first 
I thought him to be an officer of the army. 

As our train passed through the city of New 
York we saw women milking cows and at work 
in their gardens where today stand the great 
skyscrapers of the world. The weather was 
warm and everything was bursting with life from 
vegetables to man. I was very sorry not to see 
some wild Indians and a few bison, but I saw 
Niagara by moonlight. 

Everything was so new — the rail fences, the 
log houses and the primeval forests ; the farmers 
in blue denims, with one leg of their pants stuck 
in their boots, the other left any way it hap- 
pened ; the women with bare feet working about 
the house or hoeing corn. I thought of it later 
when in Canada a farmer said to me, "Well, 
Bub, you have reached a free country, now you 
can walk barefooted if you like." I said the 
beggars could do that in my country. 

I noticed the feverish haste with which great 
forests were disappearing. Black walnuts were 

[47] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

sent to the log heap to be burned to ashes to raise 
potatoes at fifteen cents a bushel, carrots and 
parsnips for ten cents a bushel, butter at ten 
cents a pound ; a good chicken brought ten cents ; 
cord wood was seventy-five cents a cord ; a house 
could be rented for three dollars a month; men 
working on the track received fifty cents a day 
and the mechanic with one dollar a day could 
own his own house. 

As we drew near to Buffalo the weather grew 
colder, and by the time we reached Ingersoll, 
Canada, between Toronto and London, it seemed 
as if the season had dropped back a month. That 
was in 1859, and there was a frost every month 
in that year. 

We had three entire sets of china which came 
safely over four thousand miles, and in six miles 
of travel from Ingersoll to Thamesford every 
set was smashed. Years after an old druggist 
who was a lover of china offered my mother 
thirty dollars for one saucer that she had saved 
from the wreck. 

The forests seemed interminable. The roads 
were narrow and the ruts deep. If a tree fell 
it was cut off so near to the ruts that often our 
wagon would go right over the trunk. Yet there 
was something indescribably beautiful about the 
tender green foliage, so different from the heavy 
gray-greens of England. The streams and lakes 
were lovely, and to go by a turn in the road and 
disturb a hundred or more wild ducks who would 

[48] 



The Voyage and Settlement in Canada 

fly up with a whir of wings, that was startling. 
The best farm we passed was owned by a tailor 
from London who had never seen a potato grow 
until he reached Canada. 

The beauty of this new country Was marred 
by the slovenly work of man. Buggies were 
never washed, harnesses were seldom cleaned, 
drygoods boxes, tin cans and paper were thrown 
about everywhere, as bad as Boston Common 
after a picnic. In spite of all this, I loved my 
new home. There was freedom of a sort and a 
license that almost made freedom a farce. I was 
surprised to find superstitions still alive that 
were long since forgotten at home. We were 
able to rent a fine log house with an open fire- 
place, four acres of land, with a young bearing 
orchard, a new barn and outhouses for one dol- 
lar a month, because it was haunted by the ghost 
of the former owner, a man named Brock. 

We got rid of a few of the ghosts in a week, 
i. e. } a colony of big rats, then we had peace until 
the September gales came. At first they were 
slight, and we heard exquisite music, but when 
the real thing came, we heard shrieks which made 
us sit up and listen, but I never believed in 
ghosts. The next day we examined the chimney 
and found that a tin pail had been inserted to 
govern the draught and this was the cause of the 
noise. 

We let it stay and enjoyed the music, but our 
rent went up next year. Evidently we had laid 

[49] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

"the hant." Some of the bravest men were 
stopped one night. A great rock stood in front 
of the gate and the rays of the moon fell on it 
so that it resembled a white figure. Presently- 
one of the men threw a stone and struck the rock ; 
then a great laugh was raised and old man 
Brock's ghost was a thing of the past. Hallow- 
e'en and all such barbaric customs were in full 
blast, as they are today, when men and boys de- 
light to do unlawful acts. Nearly all these silly 
delights are kept alive by business that finds 
some absurd toy to sell. 

Christmas was little thought of, Easter un- 
known except to Episcopalians, but the twenty- 
fourth of May was Canada's great day. On 
my asking what it meant, "Why, do you not 
know it is the Queen's birthday?" "Well," I 
answered, "what about it?" "You an English- 
man and not know that?" "Why," I said, "we 
never made any fuss about it." And that is a 
fact. 

As I think of those days there seems to be a 
bright halo around them that did not appear at 
the time. Ah, it was youth that did it. The 
magic Mother's Bread — yes, it was good, but it 
was the boy's appetite that did the business, and 
I suspect as we grow older we forget the un- 
pleasant and remember only the golden glow of 
youth. 



[50] 



CHAPTER VI 

FIRST ADVENTURES IN A NEW 
WORLD 

Whether it was the New World or youth 
or the two combined, everything had an inde- 
scribable charm in Canada. The tender greens 
of the trees, so much lighter in shade than the 
deep gray-green of those in my English home; 
the new forms of life; the beautiful blue robins 
which Canadians and the people of the United 
States call "bluebirds"; the magnificent thrush 
which these people called a "robin"; the changed 
names of flowers of endless variety; and later 
the humming-birds and the fireflies; the intense 
heat of the summer and the equally intense cold 
of winter; and, above all, the happy-go-lucky 
character of the people just suited a youth like 
me in his eighteenth year. Yet there were times 
when the unfinished aspect of nearly everything 
would contrast sharply with my garden home 
in Kent. 

Everything in Canada at this time was prim- 
itive. The churches were plain outside and in- 
side. The men of the congregation sat on one 
side, the women on the other. On the men's side 

[51] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

of the aisle there was a perfect fusillade of 
tobacco-spitting, and I have seen the old min- 
ister roll his quid in his mouth while praying, 
or take it out and refresh himself with a new 
one from a piece of black plug; and more than 
once I have seen men who would not whistle on 
Sunday go home drunk from the sacrament. 

At eventide, after supper, the mechanics 
would get together and jump, wrestle and pitch 
quoits. If a stranger came to the village he 
would be invited to try his skill, and if he beat 
them at all their games, some would say to him, 
"But we can lick ye," and then a bloody fight 
would terminate an otherwise peaceful contest. 
These rough and tumble fights were terrible, 
often costing a man his eye or a thumb. In 
fact, there was a savagery among these people 
that I supposed had long been left to brutish 
beasts. In the larger towns, on election days 
the rival factions, headed by brass bands and 
with many of the men drunk, finished the day 
with a free fight. 

I remember one amusing incident illustrating 
the primitive character of the people. A car- 
riage-maker came to my brother in great per- 
plexity, saying that an Englishman had ordered 
a new carriage and wanted his "Christ" painted 
on it. 

"Don't you mean his crest?" 

"Oh, thunder, yes, perhaps. But what is it, 
anyway?" 

[«] 



First Adventures in a New World 

My brother told him what a crest was and 
advised him to send to Toronto for information. 

As I was doing nothing I began to feel 
ashamed at being a burden to my father, who 
was greatly reduced in financial ability, and 
while I expected at this time to become a lawyer, 
I was ready, meanwhile, for anything that might 
open, and so it happened that I was apprenticed 
to a shoemaker — the last trade I ever expected 
to work at, but at which I did work for over 
twenty years. 

My first boss was a clean, pious little Eng- 
lishman, a member of the Church of England, 
and very strict. His house was pleasantly sit- 
uated overlooking a beautiful sheet of water and 
a garden sloping to the south. It was a model 
garden, and I tasted tomatoes for the first time. 
I never taste them now without a view of that 
garden and a vision of my youth. 

Up to the time I left home I had not, to my 
knowledge, seen any churches except the Estab- 
lished church and our own Independent church. 
Of course I must have seen many in London, 
but I knew little of them. But here in Canada 
all of them blossomed out and among them, at 
that early day, a colored Methodist church. I 
do not remember ever hearing or reading of a 
"protracted meeting," but here they were com- 
mon, and no circus ever attracted me more than 
this form of religious service. I was eighteen 
and bursting with animal life. Excitement of 

[58] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

any kind was like wine. I slept in a room pa- 
pered with white frost, and for three years never 
wore an overcoat or flannels, yet I never felt the 
cold and never knew what a mosquito was. 

But these revival meetings were too much for 
me. Being a born mimic, I could make my boss 
and his family laugh with an exact transcript of 
these meetings and especially of the antics of the 
darkeys, but they were not pleased at what they 
deemed my flippant treatment of serious things, 
and when I got to staying out late and at last 
was locked out for the night, my boss thought 
it was time for us to part ; so my indentures num- 
ber two were broken and I was free to seek 
another job. 

It was not long before I apprenticed myself 
to another shoemaker, who was the very reverse 
of the former. He drank and gambled and did 
not go home until morning. For me, who en- 
joyed an evening out, this was most inconven- 
ient, for he kept a fierce bulldog in the yard 
and I did not dare go home until the master 
did. My term of service with this boss lasted 
six months. At the end of that time I ran away, 
breaking indentures number three. 

As I could not yet do work good enough for 
a journeyman I was apprenticed once more, and 
this time to the seventh son of a seventh son, 
whose father was also seventh son of a seventh 
son, and he could and did cure all the boys' warts 
but mine. He used to boast of being an Oberlin 

[54] 



First Adventures in a New World 

man. He had married an alderman's daughter 
and lived in a large double house for which he 
paid no rent and he dodged the tax-gatherer. 

The house was sadly out of repair. The room 
in which I slept ran right through from front 
to rear. The windows were broken and it con- 
tained four beds for seven men and part of the 
time one rabbit. At this place it was either a 
feast or a famine. Several men were boarders 
only, who worked at the stores in town. My 
boss did what was called "job work." There 
was one wholesale factory in town and it had 
the first wax-thread machine ever invented for 
sewing counters and straps, we having to sew 
the sides by hand. A man who could make a 
dollar a day was considered a first-class me- 
chanic, while laborers received from sixty to 
seventy-five cents a day. Board was two dollars 
a week, and in small towns hotels were of the 
swell rank that could run a free bus and get one 
dollar. Common taverns charged twenty-five 
and fifty cents a day and ministers, as a rule, 
paid nothing. 

We apprentices used often to go out at night 
in the fall of the year and come home late when 
the boarders were in bed. Then we would un- 
load our apples which we had taken on the road 
— people, as a rule, did not call that stealing — 
then we would roll the cold apples into the beds 
of the sleeping men. At first they would swear; 
afterwards they would sit up and eat, then 

[55] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

smoke, and I can see those points of glowing 
light on the paper as I write. 

One wet, muddy night I put on an old hat* 
took off my shoes and stockings and with an old 
cane started out, as an old man, to beg. A pretty 
young lady, on her way to prayer meeting, gave 
me ten cents and talked with the boys for making 
fun of a poor old man who was very weary. I 
felt ashamed, yet bought some whisky, at that 
time ten cents a quart, and we sat down and 
drank it, nearly choking with laughter. 

I felt so emboldened with my success that I 
proposed to go to the house where we lived and 
beg a supper. The mistress let me in when she 
heard my sad story. I had walked from Port 
Huron. My children were all dead but one and 
I was on my way to die with my youngest daugh- 
ter. Would she excuse my not taking off my 
hat, as my eyes were weak and the light hurt 
them? She gave me a good supper, on the very 
chair where I had sat less than an hour before. 
While I ate the boys were cutting up and mak- 
ing fun of me, until the woman bundled them 
out with a sound lecture. I was profuse in my 
thanks and left the house without discovery. In 
the yard was a small house where I was success- 
ful in getting a paper sack full of bread, meat 
and vegetables. But this was too much for the 
boys, who set up a shout that brought my mis- 
tress out and the trick was discovered. At first 
she hardly knew whether to be mad or merry, 

[56] 



First Adventures in a New World 

but the adventure ended with a laugh all around. 

After this I went to the manager of the the- 
ater and tried to get on the stage ; but he would 
not have me without more experience, yet I feel 
sure I should have succeeded. I was a mimic 
and had a good memory. I remember learning 
thirty-five long verses after supper to recite the 
same evening, and did it without trouble. But 
no doubt my failure to get on the stage was all 
for the best. 

Sometimes instead of getting two suppers we 
had hardly one. I remember one night we had 
worked late and felt hungry. I said to the boys, 
"Let's make a raid on the pantry!" They were 
ready to follow. We had to go out at the front 
door of the shop and through another door to 
get into the dwelling house. The pantry was 
back, near the workshop, but as the plaster was 
off we could see the boss in the shop and had 
to be wary. Unfortunately, as I finished a piece 
of pie the plate slipped and in an instant the 
boss was at the cracks with a lamp and his eye 
glued on the place. I promptly blew out his 
light and skipped for bed in terror. It took 
him some time to get out of the factory without 
a light, and when he stood over me, frothing with 
rage, I was sleeping so soundly that he was stag- 
gered. I gave a sudden start and asked what 
was wrong. I dare not write his reply, but so 
thoroughly had I feigned sleep that the man 
went off cursing and never touched me. 

[57] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

But his suspicion lingered, and I felt it was 
time for number four indentures to cease. The 
master objected and so I had my first and last 
lawsuit. I pleaded my own case and my plea 
was starvation. I think the folks in court will 
never forget that case. The recorder was with 
me from the start, but had to curb my enthusi- 
asm more than once, but I made good my plea. 
Some fine meat was brought up by the boss to 
show how well he fed us. The way I pretended 
to jump for that meat made every one laugh. 
The indentures were declared forfeit, and so I 
started as a full-fledged journeyman after being 
apprenticed four times. I don't think I was a 
bad boy in the worst sense of the word, but I 
must have been rather mischievous. 



[58] 



CHAPTER VII 
I BECOME A ROVER 

Aftee thrice breaking my indentures as an 
apprentice, with the loss of time and experience 
involved, I was graduated at length into a 
poorly-equipped journeyman; but I had learned 
to make a boot or shoe throughout. Years later 
I was one of two in a large factory that could 
do it. There were cutters, sewers and trimmers, 
who could only cut, sew or trim, but not one of 
them could make a whole boot or shoe. Other 
trades suffered in the same way by division of 
labor. 

In the early days there was something fasci- 
nating about the work, especially in the long 
winter nights when candles with double wicks or 
kerosene lamps were used to work by. There 
were artists among the men, who took pride in 
their work and tried to embellish it to the ut- 
most. These men were called "dons" and had 
a reputation all over the county where they 
tramped. When a man took his bench into a new 
shop he had to pay his "block" — that is, treat 
all round — and in those days every man drank 
more or less, and among the dons there were 
many hard drinkers. As these tradesmen were 

[59] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

extensive trampers, they were often most enter- 
taining in conversation, and a vast amount of 
miscellaneous information could be heard in any 
shop. We had good singers, too, and at times 
a famous quartet. 

Being, as I have said, only a half-fledged jour- 
neyman, I could only get work when times were 
brisk, so that I was often on the tramp. At 
first I often had only just enough money to take 
me to my destination ; sometimes I had five cents 
over, which I would spend for a cigar. One old 
man said to me, "Billy, a rolling stone gathers 
no moss." I replied, "And a setting hen never 
gets fat," and off I went. I was fairly lucky 
in finding work until the severe winter of '64<, 
when I found myself stranded, without a penny, 
in Guelph, and after a wretched night and scant 
breakfast, I left my kit and walked over thirteen 
miles to Fergus, where my father lived. 

I can never forget that winter and the New 
Year's Day. Men drove into the horse-sheds 
with the mail and were found frozen to death on 
their seats. Many died. The cows bellowed as 
they ran through the streets and dogs skipped 
along on three legs, whimpering with the cold. 
That night at my father's house I slept on a 
lounge with my feet under the elevated oven of 
a great cookstove and could hardly keep warm. 
In the morning it was thawing and men went 
out in their shirtsleeves to work, returning at 
night with noses and ears frostbitten. 

[60] 



I Become a Rover 

In the middle of that hard winter I found 
work in a shop with some dozen men. The great 
stove was large enough for a four-foot stick of 
wood and was kept full; but I have often seen 
leather laid on a stick near the stove to dry when 
one end of the sole would be steaming and the 
other end with an icicle hanging to it. It was 
cold, and I soon left for Toronto, where I found 
work in a wholesale establishment. 

It was there that the news came of the assas- 
sination of Lincoln. I shall never forget the 
effect on my shopmates, who had cursed him 
every day. They were changed men in an in- 
stant and cried like children. Flags were at 
half-mast and shops closed during the funeral. 

As usual, we had to take our work out, and so 
banded together and rented an old rookery near 
by. Often we worked all night, especially on 
Friday, as we had to get our work in on Sat- 
urday morning or wait till past 9 a. m. on Mon- 
day. Up to midnight all would go well; what 
with sundry gallons of beer, some sandwiches 
and unlimited pipes of tobacco, we managed to 
peg away. Yet some would sleep in spite of 
everything. I have seen a man drop off while 
his hammer was raised, only to waken by its fall- 
ing on his toes. For myself, I was a regular 
night-hawk. For six weeks at a time I worked 
all night every Tuesday and Thursday and up 
to ten o'clock every other night but Saturday, 
and all to get $20 to lend to a friend against his 
[oi] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

wife's sickness; and yet I paid only $2.50 a week 
for board, from which it will be seen that wages 
were pretty low. 

While working in Toronto I was married to 
my excellent wife, who has lived with me over 
forty-nine years up to date (1915), and a rare 
good wife she has been. In some senses I was 
a hard young customer. I played in the band 
and often went to the theater and got home at 
midnight. We soon moved to the country and 
in less than three months I went to Black Rock 
to encounter the Fenians. I had once before 
been in service at La Prairie and years after 
received a silver medal from the Queen's mint. 
It came to my wife, who evidently was supposed 
to be a widow. But my term of military service 
was not long. I was urged by friends to join 
the army, and old soldiers said I was sure to go 
to the top. But I hated the army then, and I 
hate all war and everything that leads to war. 
I believe with Ben Franklin, "There never was 
a good war nor a bad peace." 

Of course, as a young man of twenty-five I 
found the utter lack of responsibility and the 
mere following of orders had a certain charm. 
Food, clothing and lodging assured and some 
few dollars to spend meant something, but not 
enough to induce me to become a hired killer of 
men. No, no, let those who make the quarrels 
be the only ones to fight. Then another thing, I 
found the men had all the hard knocks and the 

[62] 



I Become a Rover 

head officer all the glory. I have slipped down 
in the mud after standing guard for eighteen 
hours and slept while holding my rifle, at a time, 
too, when the Fenians were expected every 
moment. 

Returning from camp to the city I fell upon 
hard times. Work was scarce and now I had 
a child as well as a wife to support. One day 
our boss called the men into the office and told 
them he would have to discharge a large number 
of hands unless he could get up a new brogan 
shoe at a twelve per cent, reduction in wages. 
If we would accept that, he would keep us at 
work all winter and put the wages back in May. 
We accepted it, but when May came the wages 
did not go up. I went to the boss and said: 

"I'm going to quit." 

"Why so, William?" 

"You said the wages would be put up in May 
and it is now June and you have done nothing 
about it." 

"But I will," said he, and directed the book- 
keeper to pay me the advance. He was a good 
man through and through. When I returned to 
the shop I said: 

"Well, boys, I have the raise and the old rates 
are back." They laughed incredulously and 
thought it was one of my jokes. But when the 
next man went in with his work they believed 
and the whole shop went wild with joy. A so- 
ciety was formed without delay and I was elected 

[63] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

president. This was before the Crispin Society, 
and I am not sure but it was the first society 
of its kind in Upper Canada. 

In a few weeks another demand was made by 
the men for a raise in wages and I was commis- 
sioned to negotiate with the boss. He was com- 
pliant and gave us the advance asked for by the 
men. But in less than three weeks business had 
picked up so fast that the men wanted another 
advance. I tried to reason with them, but it was 
no use. In some way Mr. Hamilton found out 
that I had reasoned with the men and he received 
me kindly, but he was not ready to comply with 
this new demand. His drummers had already 
taken orders, the prices were set and it would 
make trouble all round. I reported to the men. 
They at once ordered a strike and the boss again 
raised the wages. I began to feel that men could 
tja-annize as well as masters, for these men actu- 
ally wanted to strike over a case of shoes that 
were being made for a special order because they 
had one or two more lifts in the heels than the 
others. 

This sort of thing sickened me and I decided 
to set up for myself. Buying a dozen pairs of 
shoes, a pound of each kind of nails, a quart of 
each kind of shoe pegs, one kip skin, one cow- 
hide and several sheepskins, I started for Omagh, 
a small town thirty miles away. There I had 
to walk three miles to get my boot-tops stitched 
by a machine. Omagh was a typical Canadian 

[64] 



I Become a Rover 

village with a few shops and a Disciples church 
and outlying farms. 

Now I began to realize what life was. We 
lived in a three-roomed cottage. Our bedroom 
was protected by a cow-shed or I doubt if we 
could have lived that winter.- In the fall there 
were two feet of water in the cellar coated with 
a green scum ; by winter this was solid ice. The 
kerosene used to congeal around the lampwick 
when it was turned down; our breath would be 
solid in the morning and the snow sifted through 
upon the bed. I used to stand on the stove while 
breakfast was getting ready and burn the soles 
of my boots. The nearest doctor was four miles 
away. One day he came to our corners and saw 
my wife. Calling me aside he said : 

"Young man, do you want to bury your wife?" 
"No," I said. "We haven't been married four 
years." 

"Well, you must get out of this at once." 
Here was a dilemma. The only possible place 
open was a farmhouse a mile away. But what 
about my trade? It was the only thing to do* 
The new house was square, logged, morticed, 
weather-boarded outside, lathed, plastered and 
papered inside and was a delightful home, ex- 
cept my shop, which was of logs without weather- 
boards and often my wax threads would snap 
like tow with the cold. In March a terrible 
snowstorm set in which lasted three days. The 
fourth day was fine. 

[65] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

That day I had to go for the doctor. I 
expected a nurse, but she was already engaged. 
I hastily went to the opposite neighbor's, bor- 
rowed a horse and begged the good woman to 
stay with my wife. Then I whipped up my 
horse and luckily found the doctor just a mile 
from the comity town and sent him off in good 
shape. When reaching home later in the day I 
heard a duet in progress — tenor and soprano — 
and on opening the door I was met by the nurse 
with the new singers. 

My eldest daughter, now at the mature age 
of three years, did not know what to make of 
them, for hitherto her only companion had been 
a fine-bred spaniel, Old Dido, by the help of 
whose tail she had learned to walk. The old 
dog walked about as demurely as a trained nurse 
and would let her sleep with her neck for a pil- 
low, let her pull her long ears or do what she; 
would. But what were these little things that 
had taken possession of her cradle? When about 
a week old Mrs. Little found her shaking the 
cradle at a furious rate, and the good woman 
had to take Fan upon her lap and tell her stories. 

The night the twins were born the great storm 
began and the snow continued to fall for sixty 
hours. We were literally snowbound for two 
weeks, living on eggs, bread and butter and 
potatoes. But we were too young to know that 
we were hard up. There were many weeks when 
we did not see a sixpence. 

[66] 



I Become a Rover 

When summer came I found work in the 
fields, haying and harvesting ; up at four o'clock 
in the morning and toiling in the sun until dark. 
It was strenuous work and my total wages for 
the season footed up less than $2 a week. Be- 
fore winter I was offered a foreman's position 
at Oakville, my old home, and there occurred 
the momentous change in my life. 



[67] 



CHAPTER VIII 

OLD-TIME REVIVALS AND CAMP 
MEETINGS 

Fifty years ago revivals were expected every 
winter in the churches and every summer in the 
woods — that is, among the Methodists. The 
winter revivals were called "protracted meet- 
ings," and were often kept up for two months 
until the people became exhausted. Then the 
inevitable reaction set in. No doubt this was 
why the Methodist Church believed so strongly 
in backsliding, while Calvinist churches held to 
the perseverance of the saints. The different 
methods of the two produced the results so di- 
verse one from the other. 

I have already mentioned in passing my inter- 
est in these religious gatherings ; they fascinated 
me. It was not at first a religious interest, but 
rather what would be called in these days a psy- 
chological attraction, though probably I had 
never heard the word at that time. 

The summer Camp Meeting was by far more 
picturesque than the winter revival. The great 
forests were lighted at night by fires built upon 
huge piles of stone — rude altars, in fact. From 

[68] 



Old-Time Revivals and Camp Meetings 

miles around came the farmers and their fami- 
lies, bringing with them chairs, tables, mattresses 
and cooking stoves ; tents were pitched to cover 
them. A large platform was erected for the 
speakers, with mourners' benches in front and 
other seats for those who were hungering for 
perfect love. This fascinating doctrine had a 
real charm for thousands. I can hardly describe 
the power with which it took hold of me in later 
years when reading Madam Guyon's Life by 
Upham. There were times when I wished for 
sudden death, feeling that I could not keep up 
a sinless life. 

I suppose this was the same feeling that Con- 
stantine and others had who put off baptism to 
the last minute, that they might be sure of heaven. 
And yet I was skeptical about the genuineness 
of these professors of sinlessness. The slight 
smattering of science I had then acquired was 
perhaps what saved me from becoming the vic- 
tim of the delusion that they were without sin. 
One man I remember well who spoke of having 
lived a sinless life for eleven years; but when 
I asked him if he did not consider lying a sin 
he got most sinfully mad. "Why," I remarked, 
"if I got as mad as that I should call it sin." 

This man at evening meetings held strongly 
for complete holiness, and would begin to shake 
and have tremors all over his body. This he 
called "Holy Ghost power." Little as I knew, 
even then, of psychological phenomena, I realized 

[69] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

that while the man may have been honest, he 
was ignorant of natural laws. 

I have seen a noted evangelist counting the 
men and women who rose for prayer at his call 
for inquirers. He saw them all over the house 
where I saw not one. In my ignorance I said, 
"This man is a liar and a hypocrite," but I be- 
lieve now he was in a semi-hypnotic condition 
and really believed, as did many other reverend 
gentlemen on the platform, that people rose who 
were only expected to rise. At this time I was 
in the ministry, and my early skepticism as to the 
reality of much so-called religious emotion as- 
sailed me with great vigor, for I was utterly 
unsusceptible to hypnotic influence. As a youth 
I was the only boy in school that the lecturer 
on mesmerism could not put to sleep. This may 
sound a bit egotistic but it is a fact, and it may 
have saved me from becoming a fanatic. 

But this is a digression from my Canada 
Camp Meeting. Of course, not all were seekers 
after holiness. Many were there, like myself, 
out of curiosity and for amusement; some for 
downright sin. Whisky in flasks and in hidden 
places in the woods was plentiful and cheap. At 
the time I am describing it was not thought 
incompatible with religion to take an occasional 
"nip." Indeed, I remember one good elder who 
rented his farm to keep a tavern near the church, 
where the old Scotch minister always had a glass 
before preaching; and I recall that one good 

[70] 



Old-Time Revivals and Camp Meetings 

class leader seldom came home from the county 
town without risking his life by reckless driving 
brought on by whisky drinking. I followed the 
marks of his wheels more than once in the white 
frost on the high bridge, and they had gone so 
close to the edge that they actually missed some 
planks that were an inch or two shorter than the 
others. But whether at a revival or camp meet- 
ing or at a raising, no voice was louder or more 
in earnest than this man's. That these services 
did much good I think must be admitted, for 
in spite of backslidings and relapses, many men 
and women began a new life which left the world 
better. 

There was always a good supply of ministers, 
local preachers and exhorters, for the Methodists 
of that day showed great wisdom in encouraging 
all the talent in the Church. There would be 
sunrise prayer meetings, morning praise service 
and preaching; again, preaching in the after- 
noon and evening. The evening services gen- 
erally culminated in a religious frenzy when the 
height of the meetings had been reached. It 
was a standing joke that many men had been 
converted as many years in succession as they 
had attended camp meetings. 

The last meeting of the kind I attended in 
Canada was held more than thirty years ago. 
I mean, of course, the last genuine one, and not 
.such ghosts of the past as may still be seen at 
various summer resorts, kept up to retain the 

[71] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

property. Strange as it may seem, that last 
Camp meeting was much more primitive than 
the first one of over forty years ago. It was 
held by the Free Methodists, and many of the 
ministers were very illiterate, some of them 
scarcely able to read; but they knew the Bible 
almost by heart and were most eloquent. In 
their interpretation of the Scriptures they were 
literalists. Heaven and hell were not states of 
mind, but the genuine article. 

One man I remember thanked God for the 
rain that came through the shingles of the par- 
sonage, and he felt that he was enduring hard- 
ness as a good soldier when I felt he was making 
a virtue of his laziness in not patching his roof. 
Women would "have the powers," and shriek 
after shriek would come from them. One woman 
who was shouting like a Sioux Indian had a little 
girl at her side, and she was frightened almost 
into fits. When the husband calmly asked 
whether Isabel were in the throes of agony for 
her own soul or for the success of the meeting, 
he smiled as a good sister informed him it was 
for the latter. And yet, in spite of all those 
vagaries and excesses, I have no doubt that 
many, like Adam, heard the voice of the Lord 
God speaking in the garden in the cool of the 
day. 

Perhaps the most unique of all revival meet- 
ings took place in Toronto over forty years ago. 
It was an exotic. I had a number of county 

[72] 



Old-Time Revivals and Camp Meetings 

jurymen in charge — men who craved some city 
excitement at a minimum rate and who asked me 
to show them the town. I suggested the the- 
ater, but that was too high, twenty-five cents be- 
ing the lowest price for admittance, and my men 
did not believe in luxury. So off to Sayer Street 
I took them, where they got off for a cent apiece 
and their full of fun. 

The preacher was a young colored man and 
quite finely got up. Before the meeting proper 
began he coughed several times and then said: 
"Bredrin, befo' this yeah meeting begins there's 
two dollahs and seventy cents to be raised to pay 
de balance on dis overcoat. Sister Snow gib me 
fifteen cents on de way, so dat dere's relly ony 
two dollahs and fifty-five cents." The collection 
was taken, and while the stewards made their 
round the minister, evidently taking me for a 
Christian helper, invited me to share the pulpit. 
By a great effort I declined, for I must confess 
I was strangely tempted. Then he asked me the 
time and fixed the church clock, which had 
stopped. 

By this time the stewards had returned, and 
on counting the money found that there was still 
a lack of fifteen cents. So round they went 
again. My jurymen were up in the gallery with 
several ungodly white boys. They shot down 
enough pennies to make the deficit good, and the 
services proceeded. The audience was of mixed 
colors, black predominating. One could easily 

[73] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

imagine himself in Africa. There were men 
direct from that country, runaway slaves, old 
mammies with big bandanna handkerchiefs bound 
picturesquely around their heads, but very few 
mulattoes. 

"Bredrin and sistahs," began the preacher, 
"I've been prayin' for Gawd to bless dis yeah 
meetin' for ober six weeks. Now if des no more 
movement tonight I'se goin' to ax Gawd to cuss 
ye. I'm goin' to talk about de angel and de 
waters of Bessesdy. Now des going to be a 
movement of de waters heah pretty quick, and 
youse don't want to be backward about coming 
forward, cos the waters won't move forevah. 

"Des a big, black Negro back dere, jes' 
a-breaking his sister's heart, and his old mammy 
done pray for him continaly" — and here the 
same mammy had "the powers"; down the aisle 
she came, her big turban shaking, her eyes roll- 
ing, and before I knew what was coming she 
gave a yell and a jump and over on the floor 
she tumbled, her heels flying. I glanced at my 
jurymen and they were in ecstasies. A general 
movement now took place, and the mourners 
came forward in groups, and at last the big black 
himself. He was a study — his eyes rolling in 
frenzy and the perspiration flowing in streams 
down his thick neck. In a moment he was un- 
conscious but soon revived, and then jumped, 
shouting, "Glory! glory!" until the place be- 
came a pandemonium. 

[74] 



Old-Time Revivals and Camp Meetings 

My country visitors stayed to the last, and 
went back to the hotel and talked until midnight. 
In remote regions of America, where the people 
would die without some excitements, the old 
Camp Meeting may still be found. But in 
longer-settled communities all but its name has 
passed away. You may attend such a meeting 
every day for a week and not see a mourner's 
bench nor hear a professional exhorter nor a 
shriek of "Holy Ghost power," nor even the 
announcement of an inquiry meeting. But you 
will be edified by the best sermons of the best 
pulpit orators of the Church, and the meetings 
will be as orderly in every particular as the reg- 
ular Sabbath worship. 



|TS] 



CHAPTER IX 

MY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

I have dwelt at some length upon the camp 
meetings of fifty years ago partly because they 
were a feature of the times but chiefly because 
they are to me a grateful memory and because 
to one of them I owe a great deepening of my 
spiritual life. 

I was as atheistic as a young man could well 
be, and in my first visit to a camp meeting I 
put the whole thing down as superstition, and 
I had fair cause to do so. The preaching was 
so literal: hell fire was real fire; heaven was a 
place with golden streets, up somewhere above 
the firmament, with two other heavens above 
that. The Bible was used not only "for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness," but also for natural history, 
geography, ethnology, astronomy and chronol- 
ogy—and what the preacher taught the people 
believed. 

I well remember telling a shopmate about the 
stars and planets, and although he was not at 
that time a Christian, he stopped me and said 
quite sharply, "I do not believe it is right to dive 
'nto such things." This was the very position the 

[76] 



My Religious Experience 

church had taken from the time when Paul saw- 
things unlawful to utter to that very day — a 
position that has made martyrs for the truth and 
driven some men into rank infidelity. 

Popular ignorance was appalling; and worse 
than that, stubbornly refused to be enlightened. 

While working in a large shop with many men, 
all of whom were Roman Catholics, I heard one 
of them affirm that the moon was no larger than 
a common dinner plate, and he quoted a learned 
archbishop, who had made the statement in a 
lecture on astronomy. This was too much for 
me. I laughed aloud and foolishly launched into 
an exposition on astronomy. I was still speak- 
ing when I saw a large skiving knife very near 
my throat in the hand of a man who was work- 
ing behind me. The man at my side warded off 
the blow and saved my life. 

"Pshaw," said he, "don't ye see he's but a 
boy?" 

"I don't care a . If he talks like that 

again I'll kill him, so I will." 

The old man at my side whispered, "My son, 
you had better get your kit out of this, for your 
life is not safe." 

I saw the force of his warning and before 
night I moved to another shop. This took place 
less than fifty years ago. 

It may sound egotistic, but it is true, that I 
was much further advanced in all the scientific 
thought of the day than most men who were not 

[77] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

professors, and there are some professors even 
today that are still in the backwoods. I do not 
mean to charge the leaders of the Church with 
willful dishonesty, but unconsciously they often 
lied to save the truth and some are still doing it. 
But I had been reading. When I was seven- 
teen Darwin's great work came out. Smith and 
others had been unearthing Babylon. Lyall's 
books on geology and kindred works had made 
a profound impression. The peace of the Church 
was deeply disturbed. It was a great time to 
be alive. Robertson, Kingsley and Maurice were 
prophets who saw some of the signs of the times 
aright. But to me Stanley was the crown jewel 
when he sood by Bishop Colenso, against arch- 
bishops, canons and deans. 

The chief marvel of those days was that the 
ancient, moss-covered Church of England, "Es- 
tablished" in more senses than one, hoary with 
tradition, cumbered with much nonsense about 
altars, candles and vestments, was the first to 
awake and has been most sensitive from the be- 
ginning to the dawning of the light. The Hib- 
bert and Bampton Lectures worked wonders. 

And what a change has followed on both sides 
of the sea! I hear papers in our rural confer- 
ences, far from the railway, that not only pass 
without dissent, but are voted to be printed. 
Twenty years ago the reader would have been 
told not to masquerade as an orthodox teacher, 
but go where he belonged. 

[78] 



My Religious Experience 

But years before this great revolution of 
Christian thought began my own mind was in 
reaction from the Calvinistic training of my boy- 
hood. As a child I believed all that was told 
me (until I could read), and so strongly was the 
supernatural side presented that for years the 
early characters of the Bible were more than 
human to me. The very crimes of these worthies 
were glossed over and it was called sacrilegious 
to allude to any of them in tones of censure. 
The theology was tinged with despair, and I was 
made to feel that I was a child of sin, a vessel 
of wrath fitted for destruction. 

One picture, I remember, in a book of poetry 
showed a man in chains, bathed in a sea of flame 
and underneath were the words, "Hell, the abode 
of dark despair." I ventured to suggest that the 
man would burn up. My dear old Calvinistic 
mother was shocked, and although she had never 
read Wesley's remarks on asbestos as a material 
that God had mercifully provided to show that 
fire could not destroy everything, she gave me 
to understand that all things were possible to the 
Almighty. 

My first doubts were born right there. Not 
long after I was reading in Household Words 
a description of a coal mine, proving the great 
age of the seams by the remains of ancient for- 
ests, and my doubts grew apace concerning the 
age of the world. Here the conflict began in 
earnest. I took my newly-acquired knowledge 

[79] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

to the Sunday school, as already told, and was 
met by rebukes so severe that I graduated at 
once. 

At a very early age I was an omnivorous 
reader, and as we sold the leading periodicals in 
my father's store, I had my mind full of the 
most miscellaneous literature of the day — Punch, 
Diogenes, Illustrated London News, Dick- 
ens 3 Household Words, Chambers' publications 
(choice) and story papers thrown in. Had I 
been allowed to play more and read less I might 
have grown up a good little orthodox boy. 
There is not a single position which I took in 
Sunday school and for which I was severely 
reprimanded that the Church does not hold to- 
day through her best pulpits. This is not ego- 
tism; it is too serious for that. Thousands of 
young people today stand in the same dilemma 
as I did then, and my soul cries out with Goethe, 
"Let the light enter." 

My callow skepticism soon hardened into infi- 
delity that kept me for many early years. One 
great fact, however, stood firm. My mother's 
Christian life, with all the narrowness of the time, 
was saintly, while my boasted freedom did not 
bring a peaceful heart. The first check came 
from the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, while 
I was walking in the fields one Sabbath morn. 
My philosophy was good for youth and health, 
but not for old age and the inevitable beyond. 
The wish came that I could believe when I 

[80] 



My Religious Experience 

thought of the words, "Faith cometh by hear- 
ing and hearing by the Word of God." I went 
home at once and from that afternoon attended 
church for three years morning, afternoon and 
evening. 

The preaching aided me little, sometimes ex- 
asperated me, but the minister's character and 
some few good women were great helps. Bunyan 
came like a very evangelist, and in a revival I 
jumped from skepticism into ultra- Calvinism, 
and that in a Methodist church. I looked upon 
my first love, science, with contempt and fought 
like a fly in a spider's web. I rummaged among 
the old Puritan divines. I became a preacher 
and although God blessed my efforts in the con- 
version of men and women, more than half my 
studies and preaching were directed towards 
proving the truth of the Bible and the errors 
of Huxley & Co. I smelled heresy a mile away 
and was ready to join the hunt with whip and 
spurs. I continued in this mood for ten years 
or more. 

In the midst of a revival in Michigan in the 
early eighties "Briggs' Biblical Study" fell into 
my hands and now my soul was among the lions. 
It was not his conclusions that troubled me, but 
his facts. It killed nearly all my sermons, yet 
men and women rose every night for prayers. 
But for the lives of Kingsley and McLeod I 
should have been in despair. I reflected that the 
saintly Baxter of Kidderminster was among the 

[81] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

higher critics and Luther, too. In the midst of 
my broodings this thought flashed into my mind : 
If a thing is true it will never lead away from 
God. And never since my conversion have I 
had such peace and freedom as came from that 
thought. Then I learned the great lesson that 
truths are not conflicting. 

Since that day the Bible has become a new 
book. I no longer scurry through Judges and 
Kings like a boy running by a haunted house 
in the dark, whistling to keep his courage up. 
And oh, what goodly company I have found in 
Robertson Smith and Cheyne, Driver and Mon- 
tefiore, Harper and Drummond — yes, and Dar- 
win and Tyndale — Tennyson and Browning; 
and I rejoice in the Heartbeats of Mazoomdar. 
In all of them I hear deep calling unto deep; 
they have quickened my spiritual life as I real- 
ize more vividly than ever the immanence of 
God and his ever-living Word that "is not 
bound," but can be still heard by every listening 
Samuel. 

The growing attention of the modern church 
to the poor, the sick and the afflicted, the works 
of the Salvation Army and the writings of Car- 
dinal Manning help my faith. The Parliament 
of Religions has been an inspiration. The Peo- 
ple's Palace and the People's Church, the college 
settlements and the growing desire of the Church 
to work in sociological fields are feeders of my 
faith and worth more than all the so-called har- 

[82] 



My Religious Experience 

monizing of science and religion that was ever 
attempted. 

Time has mellowed my early religious preju- 
dices. I have lent my church building to the 
Catholics and preached in Catholic churches; I 
have had delightful visits with Archbishop Ire- 
land and have sat at Canon Freemantle's table 
at Canterbury; I can begin to see good in all 
things and can make allowance for the most 
humble follower of Christ and even feel in sym- 
pathy with those who cannot see eye to eye with 
me. Still I believe many battles of faith are 
yet to be fought, especially as to the Bible, the 
person of Christ and the miracles, but the 
Church has become teachable and I have no 
fears of the outcome. 

In this chapter I have been conscious of mix- 
ing up the past with the present. I don't see 
how it can be otherwise: the past and the pres- 
ent are one. I continually live in my past. I 
am oftener a boy than a man; my whole life is 
a unit. Taste, smell, sight of the past mingle 
with the present. 

In analyzing my spiritual life I find the past 
ever present. I hear the hymn, "By cool Si- 
loam's shady rill," and I am eighteen, an infidel, 
sitting in a Baptist parsonage, a young girl 
playing the organ while I sing Siloam. Peace 
follows the memory. I go back centuries and 
sing, "Jerusalem the golden," with the old monk 
and get great pleasure out of it and don't believe 

[88] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

a word of it, literally. I am in great trouble 
and sorrow and I sing, "The Son of God goes 
forth to war," and my soul receives strength. 
My soul gets among the lions as I read Haeckel 
and Shaler and I sing, "Far, far away, like bells 
of evening pealing," arid I am back at my 
father's house in an instant. 

What does it all mean? What subtle psycho- 
logical power does the work? I am in Broadway 
and the bells of Grace Church begin to chime. 
Presto! New York has vanished and I am in 
Meadows Mead in Kent; the lark has dropped 
to her nest for the night, the nightingale begins 
to fill the air with rapturous melody. I see the 
owl float from the church tower, silhouetted 
against the right glow of the twilight. I have 
on a pinafore and a young mother walks by my 
side. 

The twilight deepens. The London lights 
send up a faint aurora; the great yew trees 
become black, the village sleeps, when suddenly 
comes a warning cry — "Look out!" Phew! a 
close call from a cable car on "dead man's curve." 
Never mind! I have had my vision. 

I have had thousands of visions for my whole 
life from cradle to this passing moment. At 
times, too, I am in deep gloom, shutting me in 
like a fog; my despondency goes as deep as my 
joys fly high, but both extremes are exceptions. 
I think I have some of the mystic temperament 
that comes from my Quaker ancestors. The 

[84] 



My Religious Experience 

camp meeting appealed strongly to that vein; 
the deep gloom of the forest, made more intense 
by the altar fires; the wild, hearty singing of 
the hymns ; the intense earnestness and simplicity 
of the somewhat rude people — all had a wonder- 
ful effect upon my feelings. I felt they were 
far away from me in many things but near in 
spirit. I owe to them my first deep spiritual 
convictions, and no later conflicts with doubt, no 
hours of black despair to which I may have been 
prone have ever lifted my feet from the rock of 
faith on which they were first planted in the 
woods of Upper Canada. 



[85 



CHAPTER X 

STILL A ROVER— RESTLESS AND 
MISCHIEVOUS 

I was always about ten years younger than 
my age ; at twenty-six, though father of a fam- 
ily, I was still in feeling and often in action like 
a boy of eighteen. I took a notion one day to 
shave my beard. My child was frightened and 
would not kiss me, and my wife almost cried. 
"You look like a boy," she said. I have been 
a Nazarite ever since. Though past seventy 
today I still lack the white crown of age, though 
the beard is gray. A discriminating friend 
remarks that this might seem to show I had used 
my jaws more than my brain, to which I reply 
that perhaps the gray matter some of my breth- 
ren wear on the outside has in my case struck in. 

I had all of a boy's restlessness. Since my 
marriage I have lived in twenty-four houses and 
moved twenty-three times. My good wife has 
been nearly distracted. Once in Toronto the 
drayman backed up to the door on time! Un- 
precedented! We were at breakfast. I gath- 
ered up the dishes in one sweep of the tablecloth 
and, strange to say, without breaking a dish. 
My wife's face was a study that spoke volumes. 

[86] 



Still a Rover — Restless and Mischievous 

I meekly took the things out and allowed them 
to be washed, while I piled the rest of the furni- 
ture into the wagon. The stove had to be handled 
with great wads of rags, for it was hot; but we 
managed to get settled for dinner in our new 
home. 

Two things I chiefly wanted in moving: one, 
a place to keep a dog; and the other, water to 
swim in. I was a water-dog, and would swim 
from the island to Toronto just for pleasure. 

One Sunday morning before I was married I 
purposely walked down to the dock with my 
old clothes on, and strolled right over the end 
into the bay. People were horrified and thought 
it was a case either of drunkenness or suicide. 
I dived at once under the dock, came out on the 
other side and swam ashore. I could see the 
people all at work, as excited as ants on an ant- 
hill; some were getting ropes and some were 
lying flat, peering into the water. My shop- 
mates who had been with me seemed distracted. 
I gave a yell. The boys looked back and saw 
me, and for a moment were filled with rage; 
then they gave chase. Had they caught me I 
would have taken another but involuntary bath ; 
but I took to my heels, dodged the policeman 
and made for my boarding-house, where I hur- 
riedly changed my clothes. Then I strolled forth 
to meet the boys, who by this time were laughing. 

I was fond of a joke of this kind, but hated 
a practical joke that would in any way hurt 

[87] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

others. Of course, I did some things I was 
ashamed of as soon as they were done. For 
example, I was strolling one day about dinner 
time with a pal, and spied the cook of a fine 
house putting two pies on the edge of an area 
window to cool. "Leonard," said I, "let's have 
a pie." He laughed, but was too cautious to 
help. But I got one of the pies, which he helped 
me to eat — between laughings — for, the pie being 
hot, we nearly choked ourselves. Then we 
crossed the street and walked up and down, 
watching for cooky. Presently she appeared at 
the window, and the blank look on that woman's 
face was fairly uncanny. I wanted to go over 
and confess, but Leonard pleaded so hard that 
I did not go, but went home feeling mean. And 
now you see, my friendly reader, what a disor- 
dered mind I had. However, I find I am in 
good company, for Cardinal Manning has him- 
self recorded that he was one of three boys, two 
of whom became bishops, who once robbed the 
vinery at Combe Bank. Their crime was the 
more heinous, as they seized upon the vine's last 
bunches, which the cardinal told the late Mr. 
Spottiswoode had been specially reserved for a 
dinner party! 

About this time I moved to Detroit and 
worked in a large factory. But word had 
reached some of the men that I was a "scab." 
Invited to join the Crispin Society, I said I 
would join anything that would be helpful, but 
[88] 



Still a Rover — Restless and Mischievous 

the man said we must wait until the "scab" busi- 
ness was cleared up. Soon the word came that 
I was no "scab," but had left the society to be- 
come a boss. This cleared the way for my elec- 
tion; but being by this time well enough estab- 
lished, I declined to become a Crispin. 

My religion was put to a sharp test more than 
once. The man who ran the pegging machine 
used the same long pegs in the shanks of the boots 
as in the heavy foreparts, and this he did with 
new lasts. I noticed a queer smile on his face 
when this dozen was handed to me to trim and 
finish, and soon found out what it meant when 
I tried to get the last out. Men began to laugh, 
and that dozen required three times as much time 
as an ordinary dozen would have done; but, 
remembering some of my own practical jokes, I 
never showed by word or act that I was at all 
put out. 

A little old man, a Roman Catholic French- 
man, came to me toward the end of the work, 
and, looking up into my face, said, 

"Shopmate, are you a Christian?" 

"Well, yes, I am trying to be." 

"I thought so," he said. 

The man at the pegging machine was a fine- 
looking fellow from Massachusetts, and I could 
see from my own experience that he felt mean. 
I said to him, 

"You made a mistake, didn't you?" 

"Yes, I did, and I'm sorry." 

[89] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

Soon after, as a result of that trick, he had to 
leave the shop ; so strict was the society that he 
was forbidden to do anything but attend his 
machine, and had much idle time on his hands. 
Then I took my hand machine — a Northampton 
hand-pegging machine — up into the factory. 
The men did not like that either, but I told them 
they must choose between that or idleness. They 
began to see, and so did I, that practical jokes 
do not pay. 

Soon after this I was sent to Massachusetts 
to learn how to run the steam pegging machine. 
It was my first visit to New England and a 
revelation I can never forget. New England 
seemed to me more like old England than old 
England itself. After some twenty years on the 
frontier it was like going home. The old Eng- 
lish names of cities, towns and streets met me 
everywhere. The very people looked like those 
I remembered in my childhood. The great fire 
had swept away most of the business portion of 
Boston, and I saw the new post office, and its 
granite columns, out of which the intense heat 
had split great flakes of solid stone. 

My second visit to Boston came years later, 
and the city was as greatly changed as I myself 
had become. The burned district was rebuilt. 
Some English characteristics survived and will 
always survive, but foreign faces had multiplied, 
the Irish brand being specially prominent. I 
have no prejudice against the Irish, though they 

[90] 



Still a Rover — Restless and Mischievous 

present some contrasts of character that are 
startling. 

It was soon after returning from Boston, 
after my first visit, that I was sent with another 
man — a French Canadian Roman Catholic — to 
Alpena to help out a good customer with his 
summer work. The first night on the steamer 
I had an upper berth, and nearly cracked my 
neck trying to say my prayers on my knees. 
What was my surprise and shame to see my 
companion kneeling on the floor and pursuing his 
devotions as if in church! And yet he thought 
nothing of swearing or getting drunk. 

At Tecumseh, to which place I had made an- 
other of my many moves, I began to realize what 
it meant to keep the faith. My employers were 
both church members; yet when I reached the 
place, instead of securing the work promised I 
was given the poorest job in the factory. But 
I was young and strong and made good wages 
— from eighteen to twenty dollars a week. I 
used to say to my wife I was afraid it was too 
good to last; and yet, at this very time, there 
were men talking of a strike who were earning 
thirty dollars a week. 

It was at Tecumseh that I employed a 
"striker." A "striker" is an assistant who pegs, 
sews and lasts a boot, which it is then my busi- 
ness to trim and shape. But on the first Mon- 
day after getting my striker I missed him, and 
after dinner he came in, drunk. 
[»i] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

"Oh! oh!" said he, and "Oh! oh!" said I. 
"Louis, my boy, you are not working for a man 
who can do only half of the work. If you can't 
work on Mondays say so, and I will." This 
brought him to his senses, and until the factory 
broke up he was a model of sobriety. His wife 
told me that she had a new husband. 

"He don't swear nor drink any more, and I 
have a Brussels carpet and have hired a piano." 

But I had not done with Louis. Among all 
classes of men chaffing goes on in the shoeshops. 
It was called "rigging." Louis thought he was 
smart enough to "sew me up," but he lived to 
see me keep him going, and another man besides. 
So on one occasion I "rigged" him unmercifully 
before the whole factory. Nothing but the fear 
of losing his job kept him from cursing me, and 
I felt guilty. I said to myself, "You are a pretty 
Christian to do this, and tonight is the prayer 
meeting." 

I quietly asked Louis to forgive me, and he 
struck my outstretched hand with his hammer. 
It hurt, but my soul hurt more. In an instant 
my apron was off and in a loud voice I said, 
"Boys!" All the work stopped. "Boys, I have 
worked among you and you all know I profess 
to be a Christian." (They were nearly all 
Roman Catholics.) "And I feel this morning 
I have done a very un-Christian act, and I want 
to ask Louis's forgiveness right before you all." 

The effect on one man who was a backslider 

[92] 



Still a Rover — Restless and Mischievous 

was marvelous; he burst into tears, and soon 
after that came back to the church. The others 
were "tickled to death," as we say, and rubbed 
it in ; but I felt much happier and told the whole 
story at the prayer meeting that night. It was 
so out of the stereotyped style that it put the new 
minister, who was a flaming fire, into a white 
heat. 



f98] 



CHAPTER XI 
HOW I BECAME A MINISTER 

One thought was ever in my mind, and that 
was that, should I be converted, I must become 
a minister. Another was that I was not fitted 
for it. But even at the boarding school I always 
had an audience. The story-telling always fell 
to me. In the shoeshop it was the same. On 
the train, although I loved to sit and think and 
made up my mind to keep quiet, I had to talk 
and invariably had an audience; and this is my 
experience today. Sometimes I have talked six 
hours on a stretch and have been much exhausted 
at the journey's end. 

At Omagh, there were several men who made 
my little shop a regular place to loaf in at night 
and on wet days. They would sit until 10 and 
11 p. m., and though the roads were in terrible 
condition, they would demand another story or 
song. My good wife used to wish them far 
enough, as there was only a thin wooden parti- 
tion between the shop and the house. 

I am not sure but my conversion was delayed 
by the haunting thought, "I must preach if con- 
verted." Yet several ministerial brethren tell me 
today that this is a common experience, and I 

[94] 



How I Became a Minister 

remember one poor man who went to Whitefield 
with this troublesome question. 

"What is your trade?" said Whitefield. 

"I'm a -tinker." 

"Then stick to your pots and pans," said the 
great evangelist. 

I am not yet sure that this almost universal 
experience is not of God. It is true that not 
all are prophets. But is it not true, also, that 
the discouraging of so many from doing what 
they could has brought leanness to the Church 
and multiplied the army of idlers that rob it of 
power? I am becoming convinced that the call 
was to all, "Let him that heareth say, Come." 

I often heard people say, "You ought to be 
a preacher," and so it came about that when I 
became a class leader I began to exhort as I 
found occasion. Very soon our room became 
too small for the class and we had to adjourn 
to the school hall. Strangely enough, instead 
of rejoicing the other classes became angry, and 
when I turned in my first report the Presiding 
Elder was much pleased and injudiciously 
praised it, saying it was the first properly writ- 
ten report he had received. He never repeated 
that mistake. 

My class petitioned the minister to give me a 
license to become a local preacher, or at least 
an exhorter. His reply was, "It won't do; if 
he gets to exhorting he will want to preach, and 
he is too old and has too large a family." His 
[M] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

real reason, however, was that he did not dare 
do it on account of jealousies in the church. 
Looking back I do not blame the man, for I 
have had experience since. 

While class leader I was appointed superin- 
tendent of the Sunday school. These official 
relations to the church steadied me mightily. I 
was less restless and quit my boyish pranks, for 
I began to feel for the first time my account- 
ability for others. At this time I was sent as 
a delegate to a Sunday school convention in 
Adrian and saw Frank Beard use the crayon and 
blackboard. I was captivated with the possibil- 
ities of this method of instruction and went home 
to practice drawing what I had seen. The walls 
of my shop were soon covered with crayon 
sketches. The very drum of my stove was used 
as a blackboard. To turn the picture of an apple 
into a hog, with a few touches of the chalk, was 
a favorite illustrated parable, and it carried an 
effective moral in a community of hard cider 
drinkers, where drink often led to violence and 
crime. 

Just at this time, also, what was known as the 
Red Ribbon or Rejmolds Movement sprang up. 
While Reynolds was no orator, he had a strong 
personality and hundreds of Red Ribbon Lodges 
came into existence like magic. Sometimes 
when the expected speaker failed to turn up, 
local talent was engaged, and among others I 
was called upon to speak. I surprised the house, 

[96] 



How I Became a Minister 

myself included. It is a mystery to me even 
now how it is that the words came. I can appre- 
ciate Henry Clay's saying that he just launched 
away and trusted the Lord to bring him through. 

All these steps were leading straight toward 
the pulpit. At the opera house I gave my first 
chalk-talk of any consequence and at its close 
it was moved and carried that I be indorsed as 
a temperance speaker by the W. C. T. U. By 
some strange process it got to be noised about 
that I was a converted drunkard and the good 
sisters had picked me out of the gutter. This 
may have been a good advertisement, but I hated 
that kind of notoriety. Even good old Dr. Eddy 
once introduced me in that unsavory character 
and was greatly surprised when I told him I had 
been a Christian for ten years and was never a 
drinking man. 

But a more terrible experience of the sort was 
awaiting me in Milwaukee a few years later, 
when I was introduced to a large audience as a 
former soldier in the Crimean War and the 
Indian Mutiny — a common drunkard who before 
his conversion could neither read nor write. I 
was struck dumb and whispered to my next 
neighbor on the platform: 

"He is telling the story of another man." 

"Gracious," he said, "and we have sent it with 
your picture all over Wisconsin where you are 
to speak." 

When I rose to speak I don't know what the 

[97] 



Leaves from the hog of a Shy Pilot 

people before me thought, but I know how I 
felt. I said: 

"Two Irishmen in a cemetery were looking at 
a stone with this inscription, 'Here lies a lawyer 
and an honest man.' 'Faith,' said one of them, 
'there must be two men in that grave.' But in 
this case there's only one — and it is not I." 

"But it will make a great ad.," said one 
brother, trying to comfort me. 

"Yes," I said, "and a proud thing for my 
family." 

I have suffered many things from public in- 
troductions. Once at a state convention the 
moderator, a layman, introduced me in this wise : 
"The next speaker I do not know. His name 
is Puddefoot." Coming forward after this in- 
spiring introduction I remarked, "Well, I don't 
know the moderator any better than he knows 
me, so we start even." 

But to return! It was two months after my 
indorsement by the W. C. T. U. that I found 
myself one day at the end of the Mackinaw 
division of the Michigan Central Railroad. Gay- 
lord has just become the county town. It was 
so new that the stumps were in the streets; the 
church lot was full of them. The schoolhouse 
was unfinished and the only place for a meeting 
was over a grocery. On the way up I had spent 
nearly all my money, for I did not know then 
how big a state Michigan was and I began to 
be despondent. "Here," I said, "I have left my 

[98] 



How I Became a Minister 

wife and four children and my shop to take care 
of themselves and have only a few cents in my 
pocket." While in this mood I took out a vol- 
ume of Whedon's Commentaries. It opened at 
a bookmark and on the bookmark was this motto, 
"The Lord will provide!" I shut the book and 
began to whistle as if I owned the earth. 

The room where I was to speak I found occu- 
pied with a lawsuit over a stolen trace or tug. 
The owner of the building seemed unwilling to 
entertain me, and both he and the people had 
forgotten there was to be any meeting. The 
few cents in my pocket I gave to some small boys 
to advertise my lecture and the little room was 
crowded. One home missionary brother, Abram 
van Auken, with his wife came seven miles 
through the woods. The owner of the building 
invited me to his home, telling me that I could 
take a freight train at five o'clock next morning, 
but before we went to bed he said : 

"Why, your talk is better than your lecture. 
You don't need to go on the freight; the pas- 
senger overtakes it and starts hours later." The 
Lord was providing. 

Then came Brother van Auken to say: 

"I have been talking to the people to give you 
a call." 

"A call? What do you mean?" 

"Why, to become their pastor. Don't you 
know you ought to be preaching?" 

"Yes," was my reply. 

[99] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

"Then why are you not?" 

"Well," I said, "I am ready when the Lord 
opens the way." 

"Then he will open it pretty soon. Do you 
know Superintendent Warren?" 

"No," I said. 

"Well, he is the missionary superintendent of 
Michigan. I will write him at once and you 
will hear." 

I found out that the Home Missionary So- 
ciety was the same as the Methodist Church 
Extension Society, and though I knew little 
about Congregationalism, I discovered that I 
had been rocked in a Congregational cradle and 
that my mother belonged to an Independent 
chapel and was, in fact, an English Congrega- 
tionalism The Lord was opening all the doors. 
By direction of Superintendent Warren I took 
my church letter to the First Congregational 
Church of Tipton and started for White Cloud 
to 'preach the last two Sundays in August. 

Never in my life was I so sure of doing the 
right thing. Not a moment did I hesitate, sell- 
ing out all my stock and tools except my bench 
kit, selling my house and lot, in fact, burning all 
the bridges behind me. After paying off a mort- 
gage on my home I had $150, the most money 
I had ever owned up to that time. I will not 
say that I had none of the natural fear of a 
novice, that after two or three sermons I might 
run dry and break down. 

[100] 




William G. Puddefoot 
Aged 38 



Mow I Became a Minister 

"That is what I am afraid of myself," said 
a brother who had earnestly urged me to the 
step. 

However, it was too late to turn back. I had 
put my hand to the plow and I started for my 
new field. Less than two years after I was 
preaching to four hundred people, and the pre- 
siding elder of the Saginaw District offered me 
some of the best churches in his parish. But a 
telegram from the superintendent decided me to 
stay with the Church of my adoption. 

I have never regretted it. It is more than 
thirty-five years since I left my bench and I have 
never been out of harness for a single day. After 
being three years in my first church I thought 
I was called to city mission work, but tried to 
dismiss it from my mind, for really I did not 
relish the idea at all and soon gave it up. But 
I accepted a call to Rockford, Mich., and had 
hardly got settled when a request from the 
Home Missionary Society took me to Vermont 
and Maine on a speaking campaign for home 
missions ; and when I returned I found the peo- 
ple justly vexed at my long absence. My stay 
at Rockford was brief, for I listened to a call 
from the Society to the work of general mission- 
ary in the northern part of the state. While I 
was in this service our homes were in St. Ignace 
and Traverse City. 

While in St. Ignace I met with almost the 
first great sorrow of my life. My father had 

[101] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

come to pay us a visit and in passing from the 
boat to the dock he walked off the unguarded 
gangplank and was drowned. It was a terrible 
blow to us all. We were moving at the time 
and the family had to leave me behind to find 
the body. The current is swift in the Straits of 
Mackinaw and my vain search had to be aban- 
doned. In the midst of my sorrow I was called 
by the Society to a missionary campaign in New 
York State, and while I was there news came 
that the body had been found, and my poor wife 
was left alone to attend the funeral. I can never 
forget those tragic days. My father was buried 
in an unknown (to me) Indian graveyard north 
of the Straits of Mackinaw. We did not know 
at the time that there was a beautiful little ceme- 
tery on the Island of Mackinaw for persons 
drowned in the Straits. 

While acting as general missionary for North- 
ern Michigan and living in Traverse City I was 
called to the pastorate of the Congregational 
church in that city and accepted. But again, as 
at Rockford, my frequent absences at the call 
of the Society for speaking tours at the East 
were unwelcome. It was a self-supporting 
church and felt that it had the right to all the 
minister's time. The church was supplied in my 
absence. Once a month the Episcopalians came 
with their liturgies and prayer-books, my own 
people joining with them, but my church was 
not satisfied. Neither was I, and the demand for 

[102] 



How I Became a Minister 

campaign work continuing, I was led to believe 
that this was probably my destined service rather 
than the pastorate of a single church. My ap- 
pointment at just this time to the field secre- 
taryship of the Eastern United States decided 
the matter. I accepted the call and held that 
position for more than twenty years — twenty 
years of constant journeying, incessant speaking 
and delightful fellowship with the churches and 
pastors of the East. In another chapter I shall 
set down some memories of my pastoral and 
missionary work in Michigan. 



[108] 



CHAPTER XII 

SOME MEMORIES OF THE 
PASTORATE 

In Congregational usage the first step to the 
pastorate is a formal license to preach, based 
upon the qualifications of the candidate. My 
examination for licensure was an unexpected 
picnic. I was at that time the narrowest man on 
earth. To give an idea of my wretched condition, 
I said to one brother, "I would rather be the 
worst man that ever lived, doing all the crimes 
in the world and trust at the last minute to the 
blood of Jesus than to have lived the most saintly 
life and trust in myself." I was like Spurgeon, 
who believed that the mistakes of the Bible were 
inspired. 

I was thirty-seven and had been preaching two 
months when I met the council at Big Rapids 
for examination. My preparation for such an 
ordeal was scant enough. The Bible I knew 
fairly well, but before we had proceeded far an 
old-fashioned Presbyterian minister asked me if 
I would please answer questions in my own 
words instead of in the words of the Bible. There 
were seven ministers and two women present. I 
had not calculated on anything of this kind and 

[ 104 ] 



Some Memories of the Pastorate 

was surprised and a little embarrassed when I 
was asked to preach a sermon. 

"Have you not a manuscript with you?" 

"No, nor anywhere else. But if I must, I 
will. You will now please imagine yourselves a 
lot of unregenerate sinners and I will do the 
same." 

I took for my text Philip's question to the 
eunuch, "Understandest thou what thou read- 
est?" After preaching fifteen minutes I re- 
marked that there was a good deal more that 
might be said, but "this taste of the cheese will 
help you to judge of the whole." I was then 
asked to retire, and when called back I was given 
a license to preach for two years, which I 
promptly lost. But as I was ordained in the 
January following that did not much matter. 

My library at this time was the slimmest 
imaginable. It consisted of a Bible, Webster's 
Unabridged Dictionary and three volumes of 
Whedon's Commentaries. To these I soon 
added Spurgeon's Commentaries, but when I 
read in these that "Whedon was no expositor, 
furiously anti-Calvinistic and as meek as he was 
furious," I was in despair. That took away half 
my library, for, in those days, Spurgeon was to 
me almost a demigod. 

On our way to White Cloud we changed cars 
at Grand Rapids, and then, for the first time, 
I began to see what was before me. Our train 
of two cars was nearly filled with big men in 

[105] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

Mackinaw shirts, their boots armed with iron 
spikes called "corks." All the men carried pocket 
pistols and they were never long out of sight. 
After we had passed a few stations the country- 
grew wilder. In the villages, as we passed, I saw 
streets full of stumps and rushes sprouting up 
through sawdust roads. Beer barrels and whisky 
signs were everywhere. Wherever we stopped 
long enough the men piled out of the cars and 
came back pretty full of spirits. My courage 
gradually sank and I began to feel that some 
other man should have taken my job. Then for 
ten dreary miles our road led through what 
seemed a national cemetery of dead pines, killed 
and blackened with fire. It was disheartening. 

Reaching White Cloud I expected some good 
deacon to meet me, but I had left the last of his 
kind ten miles behind. I found a church of six 
members, only one of them a man, almost ful- 
filling the prophecy that seven women should 
take hold of one man ; but one of the five women 
lived thirty-four miles away, and there was no 
help from her except by absent treatment. 
There were two villages with 700 people, but 
the roads, radiating from these centers like the 
spokes of a wheel, led to camps and mills where 
2,000 men were at work. We were on the very 
edge of the wilderness, and though sixteen trains 
passed through White Cloud daily, I have seen 
black bears licking the tub for kitchen leavings 
at our own back door. 

[106] 



Some Memories of the Pastorate 

I was a very green minister, with everything 
to learn about men and how to help them. I 
was not such a ninny as to suppose I could get 
along without books, though I soon learned that 
sermons came from life as well as from books. 
But my ambition was for a library, and I began 
by making a case of shelves from boards begged 
from a friend. I made it so large I could not 
get it upstairs and had to knock it apart and 
take boards up one at a time. When it was all 
together again and I had set up my entire li- 
brary on one-half shelf, I had a good laugh. It 
was the most poverty-stricken library one could 
imagine. This was on Monday, and the very 
next day I had word from an unknown friend 
in Massachusetts that a box of books was on the 
way, freight prepaid. Some of them were 
pretty old theology, but I could, at least, tell my 
people what folks used to believe. 

My predecessor at White Cloud had said to 
me when leaving: "I hope you will have good 
success here, but I'm afraid you won't. You 
know you can't have a prayer meeting." "But," 
I said, "my friend, there will be a prayer meeting 
with an average of six — W. G. Puddefoot, Mrs. 
Puddefoot and four little Puddefoots." At our 
first meeting there were seventeen. The people 
were good to us — the kindest-hearted people on 
earth. Nevertheless, I was often cast down. 
The fact is, I was too close to the work to see 
what I was doing. The little church was like 

[107] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

a spring in the desert, saving the lives of trav- 
elers who otherwise would have perished of 
thirst. Looking back from this distance I have 
the right perspective. 

I once paid fifty cents to see a great picture, 
and I was angry with myself at my own folly. 
The paint seemed to be laid on with a trowel. 
As I was leaving the gallery I turned to look at 
it again and I saw a river in motion. It was so 
real that it would not have surprised me to see 
a boat leap out of the canvas. It was the same 
picture, but now I had the right perspective; 
before I had been smelling paint. So it was with 
my first pastorate. I was too close. I realized 
only that I sowed in tears and forgot the joy 
of the reaping. I have found my old flock scat- 
tered from Massachusetts to California and, in 
every instance, so far, doing well. 

Strong drink is the great curse of the lumber 
frontier yet, strange to say, the drink seller is 
often one of the best friends of the missionary. 
Our saloonkeepers paid their quarterly church 
dues with the rest. My first money came from 
a good woman who kept a saloon. I suppose 
some of my readers will say, "No 'good woman' 
would keep a saloon." Perhaps not today in 
White Cloud, and all because of the better moral 
sentiment that has come from the mission church. 
One man who kept a hotel and sold spirits told 
me he was to build a new hotel that would have 
no bar. 

[108] 



Some Memories of the Pastorate 

"Good!" said I. 

"No," said he, "I'm going to build the saloon 
at the other end of the lot." 

Well, that was one step to the good, and an- 
other was that his children came to church and 
Sunday school and joined our Band of Hope. 
The father and mother were glad of it. 

Funerals were frequent — one a week on the 
average. One day I received a telegram : "Man 
killed in the mills. Come on next train." On 
reaching the place I found a poor Swede mother 
with eleven children. She wore a heavy veil and 
I could not see her face, only the tears that 
trickled down the veil. She could not speak 
English nor understand it. I felt that I was 
the foreigner and that she was thousands of miles 
from home. What could I say to comfort her? 
What would I not have given to speak one word 
of her language! But I put my hand in my 
pocket and found a big silver dollar — my all. 
This I put into her hand and said: "Good-by. 
God bless you." She seized my hand, kissed it 
and baptized it with her tears. I felt as rich 
as if I owned the county. As I walked away a 
big Scandinavian thanked me for coming to the 
woman's help and left two dollars in my hand. 
Some investments pay a hundred per cent. 

Later when my wife packed a basket with food 
for me to take to that desolate home I found the 
woman sweeping the snow from before her cabin 
door. She did not know me, but by the help of 

[109] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

the children she was told where the food came 
from, and placing her two hands on my shoulders 
she sobbed in broken English, "Goot man! goot 
man!" What are high salaries or the world's 
goods beside such thanks from the poor? 

I have the satisfaction of remembering that 
one funeral sermon at Alryton resulted in the 
closing of a saloon. The death had been trag- 
ical; it was that of wife and mother. I found 
her, a handsome woman, lying on what proved 
her deathbed. It was zero weather — no fire. 
There were three young children, and a babe in 
the arms of the dying mother. All I could get 
from her was : "I am so lonely. Oh, if he would 
not leave me. I am so lonely." I started out 
to find the husband, who was known to be a hard 
drinker. As calmly as possible I said: 

"Your wife is very lonely and needs you." 

"I have to make a living for the family," he 
said. 

"I will take care of that," I replied. 

"I am not a pauper," was his retort. 

"You will be a murderer if you don't go home 
at once." 

Just then the saloonkeeper was passing and I 
said to him: 

"Do you want money so badly that you will 
sell this man drink while his wife and children 
are starving with hunger and cold?" 

"God, no!" said the man. 

"Then in God's name, don't!" 
[no] 



Some Memories of the Pastorate 

The husband went home, pulled the chicken 
feather mattress from under his dying wife and 
fell asleep on it. When he awoke he found his 
wife dead on the slats of the bed. 

What I said at the funeral I do not know — 
not much of comfort, I am sure. I never saw 
such a company of mourners. One must go back 
to Oliver Twist and Fagin to match them. One 
woman there helped to fire my message. She 
was in rich attire and jewelry hung about her 
in profusion. She was the wife of the saloon- 
keeper. As I was leaving the house two rough 
men were talking and I heard one say, "Bill, 
another talk like that would fetch me." 

The next day a woman called out to me: 

"Elder, you had better take care, Mrs. has 

a bone to pick with you." 

"All right," I said, "I will pick it while it is 
fresh." 

Just then I met the woman and she burst into 
tears, talking rapidly. "It was all true," she 
said, "and I should not have cared, but I was 
the only saloonkeeper's wife present. If my 
husband don't quit that business I will quit him." 
And she did, going to her home in Virginia. 

A few months later I met the man in Bay 
City selling lung-testers and making fifteen dol- 
lars a day. 

"I haven't forgotten that funeral," he said. 
"I've shut up the saloon. You had something 
to do with that. And I'm going to see my wife." 
[in] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

Sometimes more is accomplished by funerals 
than by a regular service. In the midst of my 
sermon at that funeral there was a dog fight and 
I had to stop preaching to play the sexton. 



fin] 



CHAPTER XIII 
A CITY MISSION 

Near the end of my third year at White Cloud 
I met a man at conference who at once drew 
and repelled me. He had considerable power, 
which was constantly discounted by over-state- 
ment. Speaking of the needs of the lumbermen 
in the cities, he charged the churches with sys- 
tematically neglecting them. That they were 
neglected was sure, but not systematically, only 
ignorantly — and this is true today. Coming 
home from the meeting he said to me, "Brother, 
the Lord wants you in the city." The idea was 
not welcome to me. Besides, I had no money 
for such a move and said so. He threw down 
the collection of the preceding evening upon the 
car seat. "This is the Lord's money, not mine," 
he said. "Take what you need." With this 
inducement I agreed to give it a trial for three 
months and started for Saginaw with many 
misgivings. I felt I was not the man for city 
work. 

I spoke in the streets and at the Y. M. C. A. 
and preached in a room rented by the committee 
for a reading-room. I did not like the situation 
and felt I was not suited for the work, but the 

[118] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

brethren thought I was, and I resigned my pas- 
torate and accepted the position. 

It was a mistake, and I look back upon the 
next three months as the saddest of my mission- 
ary life. Our home was unhealthy and my whole 
family came down with the ague. I preached 
every week in the room provided and not a soul 
to speak to that I wanted. 

Some of the people were good and sensible, 
but those who came to the mission were mostly 
cranky persons from the different churches who 
came to vindicate their views, and the men we 
were after did not appear. And why should 
they? Who was going to leave a brilliantly- 
lighted billiard-room, with jovial mates, for a 
dingy place with old papers and a few poor vol- 
umes? When the Lord sent his servants into 
the highways and hedges to call the poor it was 
to a feast and not a fast. But when men who) 
profess to follow their Lord start a mission it 
is done on such a beggarly scale that there are 
none so poor as to do it reverence. 

Things are better today, I grant, but until 
Christians are willing to spend as much to save 
men as men spend to get lost, it will be slow 
work. On Sunday I used to visit the various 
mission Sunday schools of the city and here 
the same trouble met me — lack of wise leaders. 
Young Arabs would have regular fights and end 
by bolting out of the window and running roar- 
ing home with bleeding noses. Their mothers 

[114] 



A City Mission 

concluding that the mission was a failure lost 
all respect for it. 

There was just one bright spot in my work. 
Every Sunday afternoon I drove out to the 
"Merrill Boom," some four miles from the city 
and preached to the men in the big room of the 
boarding-house. The first Sunday Mr. Merrill 
went with me and I was surprised to see the old 
gentleman crying through the service. On the 
way home I learned he was deeply affected by 
the good order of the men. He had expected 
trouble, but had never mentioned it to me. It 
was a unique audience — mostly big strapping 
fellows from everywhere. Sometimes a man 
would come downstairs and walk deliberately 
through the room, saying nothing, but tramping 
across to the other door. 

One Sunday I used my microscope and took 
for my text, "Go to the ant, -thou sluggard!" It 
was a sight to see the big fellows come up in 
file and look at the insects magnified, while I 
kept up a running comment on the subject, 
throwing in little chunks of advice. I said: 
"Look at those eyes; they mean business. All 
summer these ants are on the lookout for winter. 
But there are six-foot ants with two legs who 
work just as hard and then land the whole sum- 
mer's work into the saloonkeeper's hands and the 
lap of the harlot." 

"God, that's so!" said a man. Others laughed, 
but it told. 

[115] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

One fellow thought to make a point against 
the preacher. "Butterflies have a good time," he 
said, "and don't lay up anything." 

"True," I said, "and they don't need it, for 
they die before the winter comes. And it would 
be a mighty fine thing for some men if they could 
do the same and come out all right in the spring." 

Here was a splendid field, but not for a city 
missionary with only a short hour on Sunday to 
cultivate it. One man with all his time was 
needed, and the little I could do was simply frit- 
tering away strength to little purpose. Yet I 
was expected to do all the missionary work of 
a whole great city — the work of ten men at least. 
I felt my work in the city to be a failure and 
that I was working at the wrong end. One-half 
the labor I put into those three months concen- 
trated upon a single parish and an organized 
church would have been manifold more produc- 
tive. There must be city missionaries, and many 
more where there is often but one, nevertheless 
I did not hesitate a moment when a recall to the 
pastorate came to me from Rockford. 

After my battle with the slums and after the 
ragged scenery of a devastated pine region, 
Rockford and its surroundings were a dream of 
quiet and beauty. Yet there were other con- 
trasts not so agreeable. At White Cloud I had 
been almost a father to the Church and town. I 
examined the teachers, gave the Fourth of July 
oration — in fact, did everything that no one else 

[116] 



A City Mission 

could do or wanted to do. But now I found 
deacons, good as gold but hard as steel, men who 
knew and magnified their prerogative. For me 
this was like putting a harness and kicking strap 
on a colt. Only I did not kick; I found a better 
way. 

The church was soon filled morning and eve- 
ning. The good Baptist minister said to me one 
day: 

"I don't know where all the young people 
have gone. We have closed our church in the 
evening. I hope you have them." 

"We have not been trying to poach on your 
preserves," I said, "but we have a hundred and 
fifty young men and women at our evening 
service." 

The Baptist deacon, who heard the statement, 
remarked, "But you only tell stories." 

"That is so," I replied, "and there was a 
mighty successful preacher some hundreds of 
years ago who used to do the same, for we read, 
'Without a parable spake he not unto them.' " 

The Seventh Day Adventists came in and set 
up their tent. I did not care, but the Methodist 
minister was hot for battle. I said to him, "My 
brother, 'where no wood is the fire goeth out.' " 
But nothing could stop him, and the result was 
an Adventist church. Their people were wise, 
never losing their temper in debate and very 
cunning in the use of proof-texts for their cult. 
One young lady of my congregation was much 

[117] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

impressed, and at the request of her mother I 
had a talk with her. 

I said: "I suppose you know that if we go 
round the world from east to west we would gain 
a day; but if we went from west to east we would 
lose one. Now don't you see if the Seventh Day 
Adventists were to go eastward and still keep 
the same day, by the time they came home they 
would be keeping the same day with ourselves 
and yet would never have changed their own? 
Of course we could do the same by going west- 
ward and be keeping yours when we came back. 
But you see there are too many of us!" The 
young lady had a hearty laugh and confessed 
herself out of that muddle. There are some 
minds that will pick a truth off the point of a 
joke who will take it in no other way. Mr. 
Beecher once remarked, "I never dodge a joke 
in preaching if it will serve to nail a truth." 

It was while at Rockford that I was called 
by the Home Missionary Society to spend six 
weeks in Northern New England on an educa- 
tional campaign for home missions. It was my 
first visit to the New England churches, and if 
the story I had to tell was a surprise to them, 
their interest and enthusiasm were a greater sur- 
prise to me. A returned missionary, fresh from 
the wilds of Africa, would not have created a 
greater sensation. Yet I was only telling the 
every-day story of missionary life a few hundred 
miles west of New England. I have noticed the 

[118] 



A City Mission 

same thing in Southern Michigan, where I have 
spoken. "Can it be," I have been asked, "that 
such things are true in our own state?" 

This visit had to be followed by other and 
longer trips until my church began to complain 
— and justly. In the pastor's absence his place 
was supplied in a chance way, not always satis- 
factorily, and it became to me more and more 
evident that my days as a local pastor were com- 
ing to an end. Moreover, I was tired. Three 
new sermons every Sunday and two Sunday 
schools had worn me out. But when my dea- 
cons charged me with bad faith and that I 
had been "hired" to serve them, I am afraid 
I broke loose. "You think you have a hired 
man?" I said. "I may not be a prophet, but a; 
hired man I will not be." So they gave me a 
reception and I gave them the balance of my 
salary and we parted. Thus I was free to 
accept the appointment of the Society as gen- 
eral missionary for the state of Michigan. This 
would enable me to gain fresh missionary experi- 
ence and leave me at liberty to travel East and 
West on speaking campaigns. 



[119] 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE GENERAL MISSIONARY 

The general missionary is still a pastor, not 
of one church, but of many churches ; and most 
of his experiences are pastoral. In a state as 
large as Michigan my life became at once one of 
intense activity. The distance from Detroit to 
the far end of Ontonagon was greater than from 
Detroit to New York; and while my work was 
mostly in the Northern part of the state, I was 
not infrequently called off to Southern Michigan 
and New York State. At such times I was away 
for weeks at a time, speaking twice or thrice 
daily except Saturdays, which I reserved for 
rest. 

Much of my work consisted in finding new 
fields, helping weak churches and organizing 
new ones. My general plan was to stay at a 
place three Sundays and preach in the inter- 
vening weeks. At Olivet I held a series of meet- 
ings, where some ten or a dozen students of the 
college gave themselves as missionaries to the 
home or foreign field. In many places there was 
no church building, and the preaching was in 
schoolrooms. Once I preached in a stable and, 
again, over a saloon kept by one of Barnum's 

[120] 



The General Missionary 

old clowns. It was here that a grandmother with 
her grandchild walked eleven miles to hear the 
sermon. It was a live time in the state. Some 
forty thousand lumbermen were in the woods 
and mill towns, and eighty thousand a year were 
pouring into the newer parts and taking up home- 
steads. In one town I slept two weeks in what 
was called "the old camp." It was rather rough, 
and today a similar experience would kill me. 

Oh, the loneliness of some of the people, espe- 
cially the women! At one place where I stayed 
I noticed a number of skulls around the house 
on the mantel shelves and in odd corners. I 
asked the good woman what they were. 

"Them? Them's beaver skulls. I wish we 
had one today. I'd make ye some beaver-tail 
soup. Laws ! when we fust come here they was 
thick as blackberries. Don't know but fer them 
I'd 'a' gone crazy. There wasn't no woman 
within fifteen miles on us — unbroken forests and 
no roads. I used to go and watch the beavers 
build their dams. One way and another we got 
along. We had no reading and went to bed right 
after supper to kill time. One day a man came 
through here looking up land. I tell ye, it was 
a godsend to hear something from the outside. 
We kinder hoped he would settle, and he did. 
Then he took sick and died. We did the best 
we could; made him a coffin out of two apple 
barrels, laid a board inside, nailed it down, and 
we pushed him in and buried him. See them 

[121] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

flowers ? Well, he's under them. Things is bet- 
ter now; we can go to church. I had Zeke cut 
a slashing through to the new railroad, and now 
I can see the trains. There's one coming pretty- 
soon, fer I know the time, I tell ye. My, how 
I did watch fer the fust train ! I most f ergot to 
get dinner. But Zeke didn't care. He was most 
as excited as I was, and we stood there like chil- 
dren; and when it came creaking along we 
jumped and yelled like a couple of kids. But 
they wa'n't no sich trains as this one a-coming, 
with her sleepers and diners. My soul, no! a 
couple of passenger cars and a whole lot of flat 
cars and a caboose. The trainmen 'casionally 
threw out a paper and we read every word — 
advertisements and all; but there ain't no 
beavers no more, only deer, and I'm sick of 
venison." 

I have let this woman tell a long story, for it 
is typical of much life on the frontier and it 
shows the value of home missions. The little 
mission church, humble though it be, not only 
brings in a new moral climate, but also furnishes 
a meeting place in the wilderness for men andj 
especially for women, who otherwise would die 
of loneliness and despair. Thousands have said 
with this poor woman: "Things is better now. 
We can go to church." 

In this same lonely cabin I found specimens 
of sea coral picked up in the woods. "Zeke" 
thought they were petrified honeycomb, and was 

[122] 



The General Missionary 

greatly astonished to be told that ages ago the 
ocean had rolled over his forest farm. 

The skeptic was a common figure in the wil- 
derness, and many a tussle have I had with him 
under the pines. One old fellow I remember 
well. He was a good violinist, and played for 
all the dances in the neighborhood. He was at 
all the meetings after fresh food for his unbe- 
lief. His doubts were as old as Thomas: How 
can a man believe what he cannot see and under- 
stand? If the Bible is true where did Cain find 
his wife? How could Jonah live three days in 
the whale's belly? 

One night the little schoolhouse was packed, 
the stove red hot, the front windows steaming 
with melted frost, the rear ones like Greenland. 
My text was, "What shall I do to be saved?" 
and I used a familiar illustration, a shipwrecked 
man cast away on a raft, and starving. The man 
is a South Sea Islander, and as the rescuing boat 
draws near he cries out : "I am starving! What 
shall I do?" 

A loaf of bread is thrown to him. "Eat that 
bread." 

"Bread? What's bread?" 
"Never mind. Eat it if you want to be saved." 
"But I don't know what bread is. How can 
I eat it?" 

"Bread is made of flour. Eat it." 

"But I don't know what flour is." 

"Why, flour is made of wheat. Eat it, I say!" 

[128] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

"But what's wheat?" 

"You noodle ! Wheat is a little grain that you 
put in the ground, and it rots and dies, then 
springs up." 

"Oh, I can't believe that nonsense — rots, dies 
and springs up! What shall I do? I'm 
starving." 

"Was not that man foolish?" I said. But 
not half so foolish as some of you. You say, 
'What shall I do to be saved?' and when told 
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you begin 
asking where Cain got his wife from. It is none 
of your business, anyway; better leave Cain's 
wife alone. Lots of trouble comes from worry- 
ing about other people's wives." 

Several people rose for prayers, but not my 
old fiddler. But after the meeting, as I was 
walking away, I heard sounds of distress. 
"Who's there?" I said. 
"Me." 

"Who's me?" 

"Ah, Elder," said my fiddler, "y ou got me 
tonight. When I was a boy some fool man lent 
me Paine's 'Age of Reason'; and ever since 
when I have felt serious I have shaken it off by 
thinking of Cain's wife and Jonah. But tonight 
I'm going to take Jesus Christ, and I don't care 
if I never find out about Cain's wife." 

That man was afterwards Sunday school su- 
perintendent and deacon. 

Now I admit that wasn't a very high grade 
[124] 



The General Missionary 

of preaching, but it did the business. A high 
grade in that schoolhouse would have been as 
useful as a high type of combined, mower and 
reaper among the stumps. Plain talk is good 
for skeptics, and I found it just as good for 
quarreling Christians. 

At one place, after preaching two weeks with 
crowded houses but no results, I said plainly: 
"There is something wrong here. I feel as if 
I were butting against a stone wall." At 
the evening service the senior deacon rose and 
said : 

"I went home angry this morning. I did not 
like what the Elder said about a stone wall ; but 
I took a nap this afternoon and dreamed I was 
turned into a stone wall and was keeping the 
people back, and when I woke I made up ; my 
mind to get out of the way." 

When he sat down the whole church seemed 
to be on their feet, and people were shaking 
hands who had not spoken for fifteen years. The 
deacon's daughter was on her feet for prayers, 
and there was no trouble after that. The people 
closed their stores every afternoon to give their 
clerks a chance to attend the meetings. 

It was at this place that a woman came to me 
in tears. She and her husband had once been 
in the church, but had forsaken it, and now they 
wanted to come back. 

"Why not?" said I. 

"Well," said the woman, blushing deeply, "we 

[125] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

moved our fence over a few rods onto the next 
farm." 

"Well, why not move it back?" 

"But," she replied, "we are ashamed. When 
we moved the fence the owners of the farm lived 
miles away, and now they have come back to live 
there." 

I may have been wrong in my advice, but I 
said, "Tell them you made a mistake." 

Soon after this a good brother of the red-tape 
brigade made a very flattering report of my suc- 
cess in getting people straightened out, but qual- 
ified it with the remark, "He lacks in details." 

I laughed at this qualification. "What are 
you laughing at?" he said. 

"Why, my good brother, it was the details 
that made all the trouble." He saw the point 
and joined in the laugh. 

Not all will agree that my settlement of the 
fence detail was just right, but it saved a deal 
of trouble and harmed no one. 

Looking back from this distance upon my 
general missionary service, I have come to feel 
that no equal period of my life has been more 
developing. I was brought into touch with men 
and women of every sort and condition and 
gained knowledge and experience that were fit- 
ting me unconsciously for the wider service of 
field secretary and missionary campaigner. Be- 
fore entering finally upon the latter service I did 
try once more, for a brief time, a local pastorate 

[126] 



The General Missionary 

at Traverse City. But the demands of the So- 
ciety continued; New England and the Middle 
States laid their claims upon me, and it soon 
became evident that I must do either one thing 
or the other — stick to my church or abandon the 
pastorate altogether and give myself wholly to 
the home missionary service. I chose the latter 
alternative, and have never regretted my choice. 



f 127 



CHAPTER XV 
MY AVOCATIONS 

Believing in the wisdom of the old saying 
that all work and no play is bad for the boy, I 
began to look around for suitable avocations, and 
finally settled upon two — raising hens and paint- 
ing pictures. The former relieved the tedium 
of shoemaking, while the latter has proved an 
unspeakable solace in the wandering life of a 
field secretary and campaign speaker. 

In my earlier years I think I followed the 
apostle's injunction, "Whatever thy hand find- 
eth to do, do it with thy might." When I kept 
dogs they had to be thoroughbreds. Spaniels, 
bull terriers, black and tan or of whatever sort, 
they must be thoroughbreds. So when I took 
up chickens I would have no mongrels. A set- 
ting of dark Brahma eggs was my first venture. 
To my untrained eye the chickens were beauties, 
but as I studied the poultry papers and the cuts 
of fine breeds, I soon discovered that while my 
birds were thoroughbreds they were poor sticks 
at the best. An old Irish lady raised one lot for 
me, and when I went to pick a few for shipment 
she noticed I was very particular. 

[128] 



My Avocations 

"Sure," said she, "I thought they were all 
thoroughbreds." 

"Yes," I said, "and most all the people in town 
are white, but they are not all beauties." 

"Och, begorra! You are right there, I see, I 
see!" 

One day I chanced upon a very fine lot of 
partridge Cochins and bought them at the mar- 
ket price. But I knew that they were fancy 
fowls, and that with hen fanciers they would 
bring a better price. Farmers would stop and 
want to purchase a cockrel, but when I named 
my price, five dollars for one bird, they 
would almost make their horses jump out of the 
shafts. 

Very soon I had scraped twenty dollars to- 
gether. I sent it to the Sharpless Estate in 
Pennsylvania, and received the last of their 
stock, a cockrel and hen. The hen was a beauty, 
but the cockrel, to my dismay, had bronze wings ; 
and how was I to raise steel-gray pullets from 
such a bird? But that was where I was green; 
he sired the finest steel-gray, well-marked pullets 
in the country, but his cockrels were like himself. 

I began to get quite a name in the hen world. 
Growers advertised their stock as "Puddefoot 
strain." Also, I was much in request as a judge 
in poultry shows. One gentleman I met at 
Detroit had a great name on dark Brahmas, and 
I found he had been put with me to judge the 
Asiatics. Singularly enough, he afterwards be- 

[129] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

came a successful evangelist and I became a 
missionary. 

The first year in the new business I sold four 
birds for fifty dollars. One pair I sent to a man 
in Ohio, who so magnified the birds he had to 
compete with that I was in great doubt of the 
result. But when he saw my birds he was so 
proud and confident that he wrote me that if he 
did not get the first prize the judge would be a 
fool. He got what he expected. 

By this time my pastime began to look like a 
profitable business ; and like the man in the par- 
able, I pulled down my coops and built bigger 
— a model henhouse : walls eighteen inches thick, 
filled with tan bark; double windows near the 
ground, so that the winter sun would sweep and 
flood the floor, while the summer sun could not 
shine in. I had little chicks in January, under 
glass nurses that I made up myself — little fields 
of oats in oyster cans for them to peck at, a 
kerosene lamp under a tin reservoir of tin, be- 
neath which I hung strips of Canton flannel to 
keep them warm. And now I began to get good 
prices, Colonel Lamb of Chicago giving me 
thirty dollars for a single pullet. I almost felt 
conscience-stricken at such prices; but when I 
heard that Mrs. Lamb had said to her husband, 
"I don't see how that little Englishman sells so 
cheap," then I felt conscience-stricken the other 
way for not charging enough. 

Once I wrote to a banker in Illinois that I 

[130] 



My Avocations 

had twenty pullets, all show birds, and a splen- 
did cockrel, which I would let him have for $100. 
I received his check by return mail, but as I had 
to keep the birds a month I did not dare cash it. 
In the meantime an agent of Colonel Lamb 
offered me fifty dollars for the cockrel and one 
pullet. I said they were sold. 

"Why, you fool, put in two others; the man 
won't know." 

"But I do," said I. 

"You will never get rich raising poultry," said 
he. 

"But I can keep honest," I replied. 

I had many calls to go to country shows, not 
only as a judge of poultry, but of dogs, singing 
birds, rabbits and pets in general. Some of my 
experiences were amusing, for at that time peo- 
ple had a very vague idea of all such things. 
All the cows looked like calves and the horses 
like ponies. Every animal was light weight, and 
I doubt if any one thing helped the farmers to 
better their stock more than the improved poul- 
try brought about by the hen fanciers. I have 
seen it stated more than once that the poultry 
and egg trade amounts to more than the cotton 
crop, and that this advance has been made by 
more than doubling the size of the birds and the 
output of eggs by careful breeding. 

At one fair I found an old man and his wife 
who were anxious to see me. They had a won- 
derful singing bird which we call a "mule"; that 

[131] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

is, a cross between a canary and a linnet. As 
it was impossible to breed from such crosses they 
were called "mules." 

The old people had entered their bird as a 
canary. 

"That won't do," I told them. "It is neither 
canary nor linnet, but a mule; you can't breed 
from it." 

"Did you ever hear the like of that?" said the 
old lady. "We've been tiying for years to get 
some young birds ; he is such a singer." 

"Well," I said, "you must enter him as a 
singing bird." 

Then they showed me a fine pointer ; but like 
the bird, he too was a cross, part setter. Again 
the old lady was astonished and exclaimed, 

"You have hit it exactly." 

"You must enter him as a hunting dog." 

They did so ; and as there were no other birds 
or dogs in either class, the old couple were in 
great glee at getting two first prizes. 

I tried many experiments in feeding, and 
watched my poultry family most carefully. In 
the winter I fed them over five hundredweight 
of clover hay and hung up cabbages just high 
enough to make them stretch and develop their 
breasts. I found out the clover feed by accident. 
One pullet laid an egg in a bare box, and I made 
her a clover hay nest. To my surprise I found 
it gone before night. I made another of the same 
sort, and right away the cock called his whole 

[132] 



My Avocations 

seraglio, and they quickly despatched nest num- 
ber two. I concluded my brood knew what they 
wanted. 

The work was fascinating. I could have made 
large money had I chosen, for I loved the busi- 
ness. But when I was called to the ministry I 
met with a difficulty. People seemed to think it 
not right for a minister to get such prices. It 
threatened to interfere with the poverty so neces- 
sary for the cultivation of humility in the pastor- 
ate. Therefore, while it seemed all right to me, 
I had to drop it for the work's sake. It may be 
that Carlyle spake, like the psalmist, "in haste," 
when he made his celebrated comment on "the 
people of these Islands," but I think he came 
pretty close to a general truth. It has always 
seemed strange to me that people should listen 
to what I said as a minister and care nothing 
for the same thoughts when uttered as a layman ; 
also, that I might do many things as a Christian 
layman without reproach which were considered 
wrong to do as a minister. And so I turned my 
poultry over to the lay element and attended 
strictly to the crowing. 

My love for drawing and painting began as 
far back as I can remember. I used to cover 
the flyleaves of books, mostly with dogs' heads 
and other animals, long before I could write. 

I remember one Sunday at church I felt that 
I could make the letter "M." As soon as I 
reached home I went into Father's shop, which 

[133] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

was dark, the shutters being up, and found a 
pen and made the "M," much to my delight, on 
the flyleaf of an old Congregational hymn-book. 
I had all the outline pictures I wanted, as we 
sold them. They were designed especially for 
children. My paints were the kind then used — 
cakes as hard as a beggar boy's heart — but I had 
great pleasure in painting with them. The love 
of color was so strong that I preferred playing 
with girls, because they always had little colored 
squares of cloth. The fawn colors particularly 
attracted me. At boarding school in London I 
painted all the woodcuts for the boys. It seems 
strange today, as I look back, that my father 
never hinted at my studying to be an artist, 
especially as he was a fine draughtsman himself, 
and nearly all his folks were artists. In fact, 
we used to say, "It runs in the blood, like wooden 
legs." But when I left school at thirteen I 
dropped all painting and drawing. After my 
marriage I did paint some twenty roses and 
pinned them up in our sitting-room, which was 
also kitchen and workshop. 

I did no more drawing or painting until I 
became a Sunday school superintendent. Then 
I chanced, as I have said, to see Frank Beard 
use the chalk and blackboard at a Sunday school 
convention. I was fascinated with the possibil- 
ities of that method of teaching great truths, 
especially to the minds of children. I began by 
drawing a big circle, and around the outside of 

[134] 



My Avocations 

the circle a pack of ravening wolves. The circle 
was safe ground, but "don't get outside of the 
circle or the wolves will have you." Poor as it 
was, the youngsters were intensely interested 
and remembered the lesson. 

Soon I procured colored crayons, and my 
work improved. Following Beard's method, I 
would draw at one stroke a circle and then turn 
it into an apple, and the apple into a fat pig. 
Another circle became a hippopotamus or a lion 
— all foreshortened, of course — and these rude 
drawings I made serve to illustrate some moral 
truth. My chalk talks became popular, and I 
was called on to give public lectures with my 
blackboard and crayons. In less than three 
months I was called to the pastorate, where I 
used the chalk more than ever. 

Then I began a few pictures in oil, but soon 
gave it up; it was too dirty. But water colors 
were clean and I could work fast with them. I 
made pictures for all the children of the church, 
and hung them on the Christmas tree. Then, 
finding that the parents liked them, I made pic- 
tures for all my members. One Christmas in 
Traverse City I found out just the day before 
that forty new scholars had joined the Sunday 
school. So I went to work and finished four 
pictures an hour for ten hours. They were not 
large, of course, but no two were alike. The 
children were greatly tickled. 

After becoming a field secretary I found little 

[135] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

time at first for painting. The calls were 
continuous. I spoke eighty-six times in three 
months, traveling day and night, until it seemed 
as if my hat was on my head all the time. I 
never ceased to feel its pressure. My friends 
were alarmed and sent me over the ocean on a 
brief vacation. Coming home I had learned a 
lesson. I must have a hobby of some sort to 
relieve the strain of work, and painting was my 
choice. Pictures multiplied astonishingly, and I 
was at a loss what to do with them until it oc- 
curred to me that I might turn them into money 
for missionary parsonages. The plan took well. 
Wherever I spoke in the East the pictures were 
in evidence and the object of the sale explained. 
The demand was large and my brush was kept 
busy continually. 

I look back at the results with gratitude and 
without boasting. After paying off mortgages 
upon seven parsonages, my pictures kept one 
missionary and his wife and four children for 
nearly two years ; another in the New West for 
a year at $100; another in Pennsylvania for a 
year; another for some months among the anar- 
chists of Chicago. Hundreds of dollars thus 
realized went to various charities, such as old 
people's homes, hospitals and private cases of 
extreme need. In this way I raised $650 for 
Oklahoma. Altogether I have distributed over 
$2,000, derived wholly from pictures which the 
kind-hearted people bought not on their merits, 

[136] 



My Avocations 

as works of art, but for the good causes they 
represented. 

It made me very happy to turn my modest gift 
to a benevolent use, while at the same time I was 
finding a needed recreation. Wherever I went 
on missionary tours I carried my paints and 
worked in my bedroom at the hotel. Often a 
ten-minute picture brought five dollars for some 
good cause, and these quick pictures were often 
better than those more highly elaborated. Sun- 
sets with swamp foregrounds were special favor- 
ites and sold well. Occasionally I had a funny 
experience. One picture, bought by a New York 
artist, and representing a mountain, a house and 
some small, scrubby bushes, brought a good 
price. "I don't care for the rest of the picture," 
said the artist, "but I like the natural position 
of those sheep." The sheep were the little 
bushes ! 



[137] 



CHAPTER XVI 
EARLIER EXPERIENCES 

In trying to write the story of my life I rec- 
ognize a certain lack of chronological order. I 
have kept a diary for over twenty-nine years, 
but only to note what I left out in addresses or 
what I used. This, with the state of the weather, 
is about all I took account of. I am now writing 
much as I talk in a friend's house, one subject 
bringing up another. 

About a week ago I saw a short notice by 
Dr. C. F. Dole of an admirable book. Its title 
was "Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth and 
Seventeenth Centuries," by Prof. Rufus M. 
Jones of Haverford College. The notice sent 
me to the book, and in reading it I was much 
struck with some of the experiences of the mys- 
tics, especially that of Jacob Boehme, which 
carried me back to my twentieth year. 

I had become acquainted at that time with a 
Church of England clergyman in London, Can- 
ada. We were standing outside of the house on 
one of those rare nights when the heavens declare 
the glory of God. "Ah," said my friend, "the 
study of astronomy would make a man either 
[138] 



Earlier Experiences 

more devout or an infidel." Now I was no hypo- 
crite, and I at once said it would make me an 
infidel. My friend was unfeignedly shocked, 
and said: "Oh, my son, it grieves me to hear you 
say that. I want you to promise me one thing." 
"I will if I can." "Then promise me to pray." 
I felt sorry that I had promised, but the next 
day I began to keep the promise, and prayed 
three times a day. In the house were two shop- 
mates, the boss and his wife, all backsliders. I 
could not talk with them about my prayers, but 
I can now say that I had a very remarkable 
experience. I had a new heaven and a new 
earth. The birds, the flowers, in fact, all nature 
was changed. Only the words of Wordsworth 
filled my case : 

"A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
And the round ocean and the living air 
And the blue sky." 

I attended at that time a Methodist church 
and kneeled, as was the custom, during prayers ; 
but no one spoke to me. Yet I was longing for 
help and sympathy, for some one that I could 
open my heart to. 

I must now tell the story of my eight years' 
membership in an atheist club, which put an end 
for that period to my enjoyment of prayer. 

[139] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

About this time I went to see my mother in 
Ingersoll, Canada. She was delighted at the 
change in me, although I did not tell her of my 
unusual experiences. The next-door neighbors 
were from my native town of Westerham, Kent, 
England. 

The father was a remarkable man, very large 
and stout. I remembered that when he was in 
England his habits were so regular one could 
have told the time by them. He was the trusted 
man of the large grocery and liquor store in 
Westerham, and once a week he would drive off 
in style and visit the country customers in smaller 
towns. He lived sumptuously on his journey 
and also on his return. His wife and stepdaugh- 
ter reverenced him; and although the wife was 
a semi-invalid, she would have his favorite food 
and fuss with him as if he were a poor, weak man. 
The two women were saintly. The two sons 
were very handsome young men, ten and twelve 
years, respectively, my senior. 

All at once the father was missing. What 
could be the matter? So good a man to go! It 
seemed terrible to me, for I had great fear of 
him. Once when I was a very small boy he 
picked me up and spanked me. I was too afraid 
to cry, for as I looked up at him he seemed in 
place of God to me. The family came and lived 
with us for some weeks, and at last I began to 
realize that my divinity had feet of clay. 

A letter came from the missing husband, who 

[ 140] 



Earlier Experiences 

had turned up in Canada, sending for his family; 
and so our friends left us. Through their going 
my eldest brother emigrated, and at last we fol- 
lowed. When this family reached New York 
they sang : 

"God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform; 
He plants his footsteps on the sea 
And rides upon the storm." 

Two days after their arrival in Canada the eld- 
est son was drowned in a millpond. At the din- 
ner in Ingersoll of which I have spoken the 
father made a long grace, and I, in my altered 
mood, closed my eyes and covered them with 
my hands. On looking up I met the steady gaze 
of the son, and it withered me. After dinner the 
young man, who had now become a doctor, called 
me to the back door and said, "Are you going 

to make a fool of yourself?" With an oath, 

like Peter, I replied, "No!" And down I went 
into the valley of destruction for eight years. 
I used to sing in the choir with this son and was 
much attached to him. He had come home from 
the University a skeptic; in fact, he was an 
atheist, but being so much older he had great 
power over me. 

There were other friends in different parts of 
the country who were atheists too. One of them 
was a genial, rollicking Englishman whom I de- 
lighted in. After I was converted I wrote to 
him telling of the change that had come to me. 
[141] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

I had borrowed five dollars of him, and said in 
my letter, "If this reaches you let me know, and 
I will send you the money." He answered me 
and said he was glad I had become a Christian 
for the sake of the money, but he had not found 
this Jesus I had spoken of. There were others 
in this circle of atheists, one of them much older. 
I could tell the story of their unprofitable experi- 
ences, which, indeed, had much to do with my 
return from atheism — as much, perhaps, as any- 
thing else except reading the Bible, which I did 
with thoroughness. To this day I very seldom 
stop when I read Genesis until the last chapter. 
It is the same with Job and the first thirty-nine 
chapters of Isaiah. To sit down and read little 
snippets, as some do, would be like getting a 
letter from my wife and reading only the 
postscript. 

When my mother was living in Toronto she 
used to attend the Bond Street Congregational 
Church, of which I think Dr. Marvin was the pas- 
tor. A lady friend by the name of Eilbeck used 
to go with her, and I attended with them at the 
prayer meetings. Some years after my mother 
was dead I received a letter from Miss Eilbeck 
asking me if I was the Puddefoot she had been 
reading about and if I was the same one who 
went with my mother and herself to Bond Street 
Church. When I told her I was she wrote and 
said, "The last words your mother said when 
coming out of the prayer meeting were, 'What 

[ 1*2 ] 



Earlier Experiences 

would I give if my boy would grow up to be a 
preacher like that!' " 

Some years later I received a letter from Dr. 
Thomas Sims, now of Melrose, Mass., asking me 
to give a lecture in Bond Street Congregational 
Church in Toronto, of which he was then pastor. 
I arrived in Toronto on Saturday, and in the 
morning Dr. Sims asked me to preach for him. 
Just as I was about to announce my text my 
mother's words came over me with such power 
that I could hardly proceed, but after a moment 
I told the story of my mother's wish. That "one 
touch of nature" made us all akin. On Monday 
night my old employer, now a wealthy manu- 
facturer, came to my lecture. He gave me the 
use of his coachman and carriage, and I was 
taken about the city to call on my old friends. 
One lady asked me if I was the same person that 
boarded with them many years ago. On my say- 
ing yes, she said, "Well, God moves in a mysteri- 
ous way his wonders to perform." 

Life is certainly a great mystery, at times 
almost making one a fatalist. When in Traverse 
City, Mich., it was my custom to drive down the 
bay to a small settlement and preach to the peo- 
ple who collected in a friend's house, Mr. Mor- 
gan, the livery keeper, furnishing a horse free. 
One night I was driving Mrs. Morgan's favorite 
horse. I had to turn into the dark forests, as 
the road was choked with snow and huge blocks 
of ice. All of a sudden my horse dashed up a 

[148] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

bank among the pines. The next instant a span 
of great horses, with a sleighload of lumbermen, 
came by on the full gallop. Had my horse not 
swerved I should not be writing this. 

While pastor in Traverse City I had a vaca- 
tion which led me to Boston. Dr. B. F. Ham- 
ilton invited me to preach for him. Among his 
parishioners was Mr. Frank A. Day, who said: 
"I want you to distribute two hundred dollars 
for me among the poor home missionaries that 
you know, and as I get paid for using people's 
money, I want you to take ten dollars for 
yourself." 

Soon after I was at Saratoga when I met Mr. 
R. L. Day, who said to me: "I see you have 
inveigled two hundred dollars out of my son 
Frank, and now you have inveigled the whole 
family. Where are you going to live?" "Some- 
where in New England," I answered. "You had 
better come to South Framingham." "Any 
house to rent?" I asked. "Yes, I have some." 
"What is the rent?" "I will let you have a 
house rent free." "I will take it." "All right," 
he said; "the lease begins today, and don't 
bring any furniture. Give it all to the home 
missionaries." 

About this time my church entertained the 
churches of three conferences. I took some of 
the poorest of the brethren down to the parson- 
age and told them to help themselves. At first 
they were too much astounded to understand me, 

[144] 



Earlier Experiences 

but when they did one said, "Do you mean I 
can have this elegant base burner?" And an- 
other, "Can I have the range?" And still an- 
other, "Can I have the bookcase?" "Yes, yes," 
I said; "clean the whole business up," and I told 
them of Mr. Day's generosity. 

That was the easiest move I ever made. When 
I reached the station at South Framingham 
there was my good friend, John Condon, with 
"The Ark," as we called the covered carriage, 
and in a few minutes we were in our furnished 
house, with provisions to last a week. Yes, God 
moves in a mysterious way. It was mysterious 
that I should have those few short weeks in 
Beulah land, and then be sent like the scapegoat 
for eight years into the wilderness. But so it 
was. 



[145] 



CHAPTER XVII 
GOD'S COUNTRY 

For twenty busy years, while acting as field 
secretary for* the whole United States, I made 
my home in New England, in the very heart of 
God's country, twenty miles west of Boston. 
Here my children have grown and been edu- 
cated, here the closest friendships and fellow- 
ships of our lives have been found. It would be 
base neglect and ingratitude for me to close these 
rambling sketches, without attempting to pay 
some suitable tribute to the spot that has done 
so much for me and mine. 

Approaching the Hudson River from the 
West, my first impressions are always physical. 
The landscape always fascinates me. I shall 
never forget when I first left the lumber woods 
of Northern Michigan and saw the maples of 
New York state in full leaf. The sight of them 
nearly brought tears to my eyes, and when I 
awoke the next morning in the Mohawk Valley 
no early morning newspaper could tempt me. 
Soon we were climbing the Berkshires. 

The ride up the Connecticut Valley afterward 
seemed like a vision, the cattle standing knee- 
deep in the lush grass, the white farmhouses with 
[146] 



God's Country 

their green blinds, the ever-changing hues of the 
river, gleaming in its cahn nooks like molten 
gold, and anon rippling in silver wavelets. Un- 
til that evening I had never dreamed of such a 
glut of beauty. Presently Ascutney loomed into 
view, a solid block of cobalt; then other moun- 
tains, reflecting the colors of the Apocalypse; 
"all the hills did melt." When I could bring my 
eyes down from the hills, I was deeply impressed 
by the prevailing neatness of the villages, con- 
trasting so sharply with what I had left behind. 

Of course I am writing of conditions that pre- 
vailed over a quarter of a century ago. Great 
changes have taken place in the West since then. 
The muddy streets are now paved with bricks, 
the wooden sidewalks have given way to con- 
crete, and the dark places are as light as elec- 
tricity can make them. The dwellings of the 
people have responded to the march of improve- 
ment. Pretty homes and even stately mansions 
have, in many towns, replaced the shacks and 
cabins of the past, and coming from the West 
today I do not feel all the sensations of my first 
approach to New England. 

So much for the physical side. But how shall 
I tell what New England has done for me, the 
entree it has given me to many of the finest 
homes in the world — the sanctity which age 
brings and which seems to consecrate the home 
— the opportunity I have had in never-to-be-for- 
gotten interviews with the ripest scholars of the 

[ 1*7 ] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

land. As I look back, it seems to me something 
almost equivalent to a college course. How I 
reveled in the masterpieces of classic art hang- 
ing on the walls of New England homes! I 
swallowed whole libraries at a gulp. The very 
titles of the books were an inspiration. The 
quiet, low-toned voices impressed me; even on 
the trains there were no loud shouts across a 
dozen seats. 

I have seen the venerable president of Wil- 
liams College standing in the aisle as the train 
swayed along the curves of the Fitchburg Rail- 
way, until the person addressing him had taken 
his seat, and there I learned a lesson in New 
England courtesy. Pres. Mark Hopkins made 
me think without even speaking to me. It would 
be invidious to mention the names of men and 
women who have honored me with entertainment 
in houses such as I had never dreamed of, for 
beauty and comfort. In fact New England, to 
me, was like a new world. From the woods of 
northern Maine to the shores of Rhode Island 
I have delightful memories, yet (why it is I do 
not know) Massachusetts has a moral grandeur 
that stirs me above all other parts of this land 
or of any other land. 

To this day I cannot stand on Burial Hill at 
Plymouth without tears. I feel linked to those 
Pilgrims as if I were to the manner born. The 
past twenty-five years have made great changes 
in the Bay State, some of which bring a mo- 

[148] 



God's Country 

mentary sadness, but only for a moment. For 
I remember the past is secure; it can never be 
changed nor forgotten and that past has still a 
mighty hold on the present. When people tell 
me of the preponderant foreign element in Bos- 
ton, I say I do not care. Boston has a quieter 
and more orderly Sunday than any city of its 
size in the country, and so long as Plymouth 
Rock and Burial Hill remain each generation, 
whether native or foreign, will have but one 
national anthem and they will sing it together: 

"Our country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee we sing." 

Who can read the wonderful life-story of 
Mary Antin, which has been called "An Amer- 
ican Miracle," without feeling in his heart a flush 
of joy and hope? I can see that little Russian 
Jewess dancing in that cul de sac of a Boston 
street, dancing in sheer joy like one of Corot's 
nymphs, over her vision of freedom fulfilled. 

Listen to Mr. Rosentheim when Goldie asks 
him, "Would you send me to high school?" 

"Sure as I am a Jew," he replies, with a glow 
of inspiration in his deep eyes. "Only show 
yourself worthy, Goldie, and I'll keep you in 
school till you get to something; for in America 
everybody can get to something if he only wants 
to. I would send you further than high school 
— to be a teacher, maybe! Why not? In Amer- 

[149] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

ica everything is possible. But you will have to 
work hard, Goldie, like Mary Antin. You will 
have to study hard — put your whole mind to it." 

Heredity is a powerful force, but environ- 
ment, I believe, is a greater. The uplift that 
comes to a young foreigner, almost from the 
moment of landing in America, especially if he 
lands in New England, is beyond the power of 
a pessimist to grasp. It is like a new birth. Lo! 
a public library, free to all; museums, free to 
all; public schols, free to all! Aspirations surge 
through the souls of immigrant boys and girls 
as such opportunities open on every hand, and 
above all their freedom. I was a young immi- 
grant myself and have felt it all. Tens of thou- 
sands of immigrant children feel all that Mary 
Antin felt, but lack her gift to tell it. You can- 
not close the eye and ear that unconsciously take 
in the visions of promise and the golden oppor- 
tunities that greet the incoming immigrant ; and 
as long as America keeps her public schools, her 
free libraries and museums, and treats her peo- 
ple, native and foreign, with equal justice, the 
future is safe. 

I recall with wonder my experiences with the 
colleges and universities of New England. It 
took my breath away when I first went to Yale. 
Who was I, that left my last school at fourteen, 
and took so little away, to be standing before 
professors and students to make an address! 
But I soon got over that trouble, for I had what 

[150] 



God' 8 Country 

Emerson says America lacked — "abandonment" ; 
and so from Bangor, Me., to Pomona, Cal., I 
have repeatedly addressed college students. I do 
not know how many times I have visited these 
seats of learning, but I have always found a 
welcome for which I have been equally grateful 
and surprised. 

Nothing gives me more joy than to meet some 
bronze-faced man and hear him say: "Pudde- 
foot, I am one of your Andover or your Dart- 
mouth boys," or "Puddefoot, my father took me 
to hear you when I was a boy." In one such 
case as I turned to greet the speaker I saw a 
gray-haired college president, and my mind was 
carried back to that college meeting when his son 
and ten other young men became Christians and 
decided to study for the ministry. Again and 
again I have been amazed to find how far some 
humble candle of mine has thrown its beams. 

But it occurs to me that I am not sticking 
to my text. Too many of my texts have been 
points of departure and too many of my ser- 
mons, I fear, are like the colored brother's who 
announced that his discourse would be " 'basted' 
on to the following text." 

To sum up all my thoughts on New England, 
I find no better words to express them than those 
of a great poet : 

How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy 
tabernacle, O Israel. As the valleys are they 
spread forth, as gardens by the river s side, as 

[151] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

the trees of lign aloes, which the Lord hath 
planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters. 

I am at home in every state and I love them 
all. Each has its own attraction, but the crown 
jewel, to me, is the Old Bay State. God bless 
her! 

After writing a large part of my autobiogra- 
phy, a friend suggested that I had not mentioned 
my wife and I was reminded of John Stuart 
Mill who wrote his autobiography and never men- 
tioned the fact that he had a mother. I hesitate 
to write about my wife. No man ever felt the 
pathos of Carlyle's words over his wife's grave 
more keenly than I did, and I thanked God when 
I read them that my wife was still alive. Her 
real portrait is found in Proverbs, Chapter 31: 
10-29 verses. 

One winter we had to live on two dollars and 
a half a week and the whole family had to sleep 
in the kitchen, and yet in the spring we owed 
no man anything. It is true everything was 
very cheap except kerosene, which was seventy- 
five cents a gallon, but our lamp held only a half 
pint, which lasted a week, and very pretty it 
looked with a piece of crimson cloth stitched to 
the wick. We bought a quarter of beef, which 
cost two and one-half cents a pound and a hand- 
some little pig weighing one hundred pounds 
which cost two dollars. All vegetables also were 
cheap, eggs, ten cents a dozen; butter, ten cents 
a pound ; and as for milk you could hardly sell it. 

[152] 




Mrs. W. G. Puddefoot 



God's Country 

Nearly all of us had a cow. Oh, how my wife 
laughed at my milking. She would push me 
away and show me how to do it, but I never 
learned. The animals loved her, the cow, the 
cat and the chickens. In fact the cow would 
follow her like a dog and once nearly into a dry- 
goods store. The flowers flourished under her 
care. She yearly trimmed her hat until like 
Holmes' one-hoss shay it went to pieces. 

Hard times ? I wish they were here once more 
with my young wife by my side. When I look 
back at those pioneer days among the lumber 
towns, what should I have done without her? 
Sickness came — diphtheria eleven times, and 
more than once I expected to be bereaved; but 
out of it all my wife came nursing all the little 
brood. There were times I was where neither 
telegram nor letter could reach me and it was 
on one of these trips back of the "Soo," I found 
on my return the whole family down with 
diphtheria. 

My wife used to have anxious times when I 
began to preach. One evening I announced for 
my text, "A golden bell and a pomegranate," 
and instantly she covered her face with her hands 
and I knew that she was praying for me. After 
the sermon she told me she could not see how I 
could make anything out of such a text. But 
her confidence was serene after that experience. 

"Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing 
and obtaineth favour of the Lord, and a prudent 

[153] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

wife is from the Lord." If we live until next 
April the fifth, we shall have been married fifty 
years and I would like to live it all over again. 
When we left Traverse City, Mich., the ladies 
of the church put on record a letter of warm 
appreciation, in the course of which they said: 
"With her, simply to live is to let her light shine, 
and its pure radiance wins every one within its 
reach to aspire after a better life, a life full of 
loving and charitable impulses, as hers is." . . . 
"Only eternity will tell the good her unselfish 
example has wrought." 

I have been blessed by two good women — my 
mother and my wife. The memory of one and 
the presence of the other have been to me like 
Aaron and Hur when they held up Moses' arms 
during the battle. Once I came home and found 
my house quarantined, scarlet fever and small- 
pox were everywhere. Churches and schools 
were closed, but the saloons were in full blast. 
It was at such times that my wife's energies were 
in full play and when we left the town the people 
reminded me of Rev. John Fawcett's people. 
They stood around crying as he was about to 
leave them. When he saw them he said : "Why, 
my people, do you love me so much? Then I 
will never leave you." He went into his study 
while his people merrily unpacked his goods and 
wrote, "Blest be the tie that binds." 

The weight of years and what she has passed 
through on her pilgrimage have told on her, but 

[154] 



God's Country 

she still has the willing spirit. Dr. G. A. Gor- 
don's books, with Brierley's, are her favorite 
reading and The Congregationalist with Rev. I. 
O. Rankin's prayers and Dr. Brown's exegesis 
of the Sunday school lessons are much prized by 
her. 



[155] 



CHAPTER XVIII 

TRIFLING INCIDENTS THAT LED 
TO SOMETHING 

A boy swinging his hands as he walked along 
The Strand in London, accidentally struck an 
old gentleman's fob pocket. The old gentleman 
caught the boy's hand and said, "Here, you 
young rascal, you are trying to steal my watch." 
The boy replied indignantly, "I was not. I was 
swimming the Hellespont." He had been read- 
ing of Leander and Hero that morning and in 
his imagination The Strand became a river. The 
old gentleman was so struck with the boy's im- 
agination that he took him to the Blue Coat Boys 
School and paid for his education. The boy was 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

It has occurred to me that some things which 
seemed of no moment at the time led to momen- 
tous changes in my life. When I went to Adrian 
in 1879 to see Frank Beard give his chalk talks, 
so that I might better illustrate the Sunday 
school lessons, I little dreamed that in six 
months' time I should be preaching. But this 
came about directly from seeing the possibilities 
in the use of the blackboard. 

[156] 



Trifling Incidents that Led to Something 

When I had been preaching some eighteen 
months I made my maiden speech before the 
State Conference in Charlotte, Mich. The 
young man who spoke before me came from 
White Rock, Mich., and I came from White 
Cloud. As I ascended the platform good old 
Dr. Zachary Eddy said, "What does Warren 
want with these country ministers on a night like 
this?" I had been speaking about ten minutes 
when I said, the opportunities in these new towns 
were immense, for the streets were filled with 
boys and girls: evidently the parents had not 
read Malthus. Then Dr. Eddy laughed aloud 
and started the whole conference. In a few 
minutes Dr. Warren pulled my coat tail. "Is 
my time up?" I said. "Yes, I am sorry." "So 
are we," said Dr. Eddy. 

When the session was closed that evening Rev. 
J. Morgan Smith came to me and said, "The 
Olivet people wish me to speak for them next 
Sunday, would you supply my pulpit for Sun- 
day?" "Yes," I said, never thinking about the 
undertaking. I had a half sheet of paper with 
some notes I had dotted down on the text, "Re- 
joice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Re- 
joice." On the train was Dr. Gallup, the Sun- 
day school superintendent. Pie said: "I am 
sorry that I cannot hear you tomorrow. I am 
just convalescing from a severe illness and my 
doctor will not allow me to go," adding, "I pre- 
sume you will address a different kind of an 

[157] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

audience than you are accustomed to, probably 
the most cultured in Michigan." Still I did not 
worry. 

At the depot I was met by good Deacon 
Avery who took me to his fine home. In the eve- 
ning Mr. Hollister called for me and went with 
me to the church and introduced me to the New 
York artist who played the organ. I was asked 
to choose the hymns, and when I had selected 
them I said, "I suppose you can play all the 
tunes that are set to the hymns?" He smiled 
and said he thought he could. Still it did not 
dawn on me what I had undertaken, but the next 
morning Mr. Hollister took me into the audi- 
ence room of the church and then for the first 
time I felt small. I ascended the platform which 
seemed to me half as big as my church, and there 
I read the order of service in a glass case. 

As the people came in I thought of what Dr. 
Gallup had said to me, and if fine clothes made 
culture I felt that I was in for it. Gentlemen 
with gold-headed canes, judges and other high 
dignitaries entered, while silks and satins kept 
up a continued swish down the aisles. What 
troubled me most was that between every thing 
I said there were interludes that made me nerv- 
ous, as I did not know when to start in again. 
However, it came at last to the sermon and I 
felt as Paul did when he came to the three tav- 
erns, I thanked God and took courage. 

Before I began I told them that a gentleman 

[158] 



Trifling Incidents that Led to Something 

had said that I should preach to a very different 
audience from that to which I was accustomed 
to and probably the most cultured congregation 
in Michigan. "Now," I said, "it has occurred 
to me that you would listen to a very different 
minister from the one you are accustomed to 
hear, so we will start even." I shall never for- 
get the smile that greeted my announcement, and 
especially the old people who leaned back in 
their pews with complacency. 

The older folks were delighted with my ser- 
mon for I was so narrow that I could have 
slipped through a crack in the sidewalk; while 
the young people were in raptures at the moss- 
back from the lumber woods, and after a few 
weeks I received a check and my wife a letter 
and a box for the children for my services as 
supply. I did not know that such a custom 
existed. 

I have written the above as it happened be- 
cause so many people I have heard tell the inci- 
dent in so many different ways. Something like 
this occurred at Montclair, N. J., but I will omit 
the details. 

I have had all kinds of audiences, in the lumber 
camps, in hospitals and state prisons. Once I 
had 1,200 men before me in the state prison of 
Indiana at Michigan City. It was a rainy morn- 
ing and I complimented them on so many com- 
ing on such a stormy morning and so promptly 
too. They applauded long enough to give me 

[159] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

time to think, but it was not all funny. I gave 
them a stiff talk on Zacchseus and restitution. 
I never had a more attentive audience nor saw 
a prison so well conducted, not a firearm in any 
officer's hands, simply a cane and the order 
complete. 

I could not help noticing at the Reformatory 
in Concord, Mass., where all the inmates are 
young men, how high seemed the average order 
of intelligence. 

But of all audiences to draw a man out, give 
me the students of our colleges and seminaries. 
They are like a hair trigger. The least hint and 
they catch the point. I remember once speaking 
to some 400 young men who were singing when 
I came in, "I am clinging to the cross." I said, 
"Boys, are you clinging to the cross to keep it 
from slipping from your shoulders, or are you 
just hanging on to it?" For a moment they were 
surprised. I said: "If you mean the latter it is 
not orthodox. 'If any man will follow me let 
him take up his cross.' You see," I said, "it is 
your own cross you must carry." The next time 
they sung they began, "The Son of God goes 
forth to war." I said, "That is better." I never 
realized my responsibility more than when talk- 
ing to students and I have had more than one 
come to me for help, when in confessing their 
sins, some of these surprised me. But such men 
when they do change become soldiers of the cross 
indeed. 

[160] 



Trifling Incidents that Led to Something 

Of course in thirty-five years of service among 
all sorts and conditions of men I have had many 
strange experiences. Some of them people find 
it hard to believe but, as I often say, they won't 
be lost if they cannot believe all that I tell them, 
but one thing is sure : The unbelievable parts are 
the truest to the facts. 

I remember when I first spoke at Harvard 
Church, Brookline, Dr. Thomas met me at his 
robing-room. "Why," he said, "you have not 
even a white necktie on. Won't you sit in my 
pew until I call you?" "Yes, anywhere will 
answer," I replied. The music was splendid. 
Dudley Buck's "Hear, O Israel," was played 
and sung superbly and I was in the seventh 
heaven. No wonder, I thought, the old prophet 
said, "Go bring me a minstrel and I will proph- 
esy." I remember as I mounted the pulpit 
stairs, I said, "I love music, but friends, I have 
so important a message this morning that I could 
have made kindling wood of your 'Kist of 
whistles.' " 

The music certainly gave me wings and I sup- 
pose I must have forgotten myself, for in the 
midst of my talk I knocked a vase of flowers off 
with my right hand and caught it with my left 
and kept on talking as if nothing had happened. 
A man in the audience shouted and clapped his 
hands, causing the whole audience to turn their 
heads. How like lightning does the mind work ! 
I had hardly put the vase down when I thought 

[161] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

of Charles Kingsley, when speaking in Denver, 
Colorado, he caught an insect, examined it for a 
moment and then let it loose again, but all the 
time he kept on speaking. 

As my memory is at work many amusing 
things come back to me. I was speaking in 
Newburyport, where the State Association of 
Massachusetts was holding its meeting. It was 
getting late and a clam chowder was in the im- 
mediate future when the Moderator, Dr. Jen- 
kins, said in a loud clear voice, "You have a 
minute." "I will make a minute of it," I replied. 
The reply so pleased the audience that I had 
fifteen minutes allowed me. Some years after a 
gentleman said to me: "Mr. Puddefoot, I have 
often wished to ask you a question. When Dr. 
Jenkins said you had a minute and you said, 'I 
will make a minute of it,' did it come on the spur 
of the moment or had you it laid by for such an 
occasion?" I think I told him, "I had it in cold 
storage for some time." Then I laughed and 
said, "How could a man hold such an answer 
ready to a question he could not possibly 
foresee?" 

I have often been called to immerse people 
and one minister wrote to me and said: "Do 
come and be John the Baptist for me. I have 
two women to immerse and they are both six 
feet high, the water is deep and rapid and I can- 
not swim." I went, and so pleased were the 
people with my dexterity that this minister wrote 

[162] 



Trifling Incidents that Led to Something 

again: "There are two more women wish you to 
immerse them." I wrote in answer that I could 
not come as I had a bad cold. He wrote back 
to say that the women would not allow a man 
to immerse them who was afraid of a cold. I 
answered that "I had another reason now, as I 
never baptized fools." The first time I baptized 
any one by immersion was in Lake Michigan. 
The old lady who took me home in her buggy 
said, "You did that beautifully!" I answered: 
"That was my first attempt." She was much 
surprised, but I spoiled it all by telling her I was 
a good swimmer and that accounted for it. 



[168] 



CHAPTER XIX 

MY CONTACT WITH DRUMMOND, 

ARCHBISHOP IRELAND AND 

BRIERLEY 

Some years ago I was invited to address the 
Baptist Social Union in Boston. Among other 
things, I remarked that I had no words to ex- 
press my contempt for a woman who preferred 
a pug dog to a sweet little baby. I had used 
the expression before and I had no idea what a 
dust it would raise. 

The next morning I started for New York 
and had hardly left the house when a Boston 
Globe reporter called for an interview. I left 
New York for Newark, N. J., and soon after 
a reporter from the New York World wished 
for an interview. I gave him ten minutes and 
that ten minutes' interview filled two columns 
of the World, and I was pictured as a man with 
side whiskers and mustache, and as feminine as 
Leonardo's St. John and about as much like 
myself as the son of thunder was like that effem- 
inate creature in his picture of the Last Supper. 

I received letters of thanks and congratulation 
from all over the countiy, from doctors, business 
men and others. One such letter came from 

[ 164 ] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland and Brierley 

Charles Francis Train, dated at "The Palace" — 
that is, a fifteen-cent room at the Mills Hotel. 
It began, "Citizen Puddefoot." Another was 
from Joaquin Miller, thanking me warmly, 
though I had hard work to read it, as the writing 
was of the Horace Greeley, Rufus Choate and 
Dean Stanley type. All the letters I received 
were full of thanks for what I had said at the 
Baptist Social Union, all but one from a child- 
less woman who was decidedly abusive, but one 
sting does not hurt among so much honey. Lil- 
lian Russell, who wrote a two-column letter to 
the paper, thought a woman could love dogs and 
babies too. I replied that I was glad Lillian 
loved babies, for I knew she was fond of 
husbands. 

To this day I cannot understand why so com- 
mon a remark should have gone into the press 
from Maine to California, while statements of 
real pith and moment get scant publicity. I 
suppose it was the silly season. I do not know 
who wrote the interview, but I often think of 
the words: "A mad potato on the whirlwind 
flies." 

Far pleasanter and more fruitful were my 
interviews with Prof. Henry Drummond in 
those red-letter days when we sat under the 
shade of the trees in the Chautauqua grounds 
at the back of my home in Framingham. I told 
him of my battle to keep the faith, how I loved 
scientific works but dreaded to read them and 

[165] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

how I still ran past some of the books of the Old 
Testament as a boy does when passing a haunted 
barn, whistling to keep my courage up. 

He gave me a list of books to read, among 
them, Spencer's First Principles of Ethics, Gei- 
kie's Geology and the English Nature series. I 
felt safe under such a guide and I read them 
all with great pleasure and profit. At one of 
the Chautauqua meetings, as he was about to 
begin his address on the Old Testament, a 
brother on the platform asked him whether the 
first chapter in Genesis coincided with science. 
"No!" said Drummond. 

"Not on general principles?" suggested the 
inquirer. 

"Not on any principles," said Drummond. 
"The Bible is a religious book and not a scientific 
book." 

"Will you give us what you regard as one 
of the mistakes of the Bible, Professor?" 

"I do not think it would be profitable to go 
into such a discussion." 

"Well, won't you give us one case?" urged 
his inquisitor. 

"Well, then, the hare chewing the cud." 

"It appears to," was the reply. 

"Yes," said Drummond, "it appears to" — and 
turning to me with a quaint smile and just the 
smallest wink of his left eye, he gave us his 
splendid address without further interruption. 

In one of our talks he said to me, "When 

[166] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland and Brierley 

I went to Africa I took five gold watches with 
me to give to the kings I might meet, and I 
brought them all home — not one of them had a 
pocket. The only one who had anything on was 
an old king who had picked up an English tour- 
ist's castaway straw hat. His kinky hair pro- 
truded in places and acted as hatpins. I could 
not get them to go more than a mile for love 
or money. They said: 'What's the use?' " 

Sure enough, what was the use? These people 
went one better than St. Paul, when he said, 
"Having food and raiment be content," for these 
people were content without the raiment. They 
took no thought for the morrow as to what they 
should eat or drink or wherewithal they should 
be clothed. Discontent is the mother of improve- 
ment, but these tribes were content — no taxes to 
pay, no debtor's prisons, nor any other kind, no 
trouble to build houses, no hired girl or cook 
leaving them all of a sudden. In fact they en- 
joyed perfect freedom. How can such tribes as 
the Dyaks of Borneo be reached? They have no 
words in their language for love or duty. 

My first meeting with Archbishop Ireland 
was on the Lake Shore Road, on my way 
to Chicago. The porter began making up the 
berth opposite mine and the occupant of that 
section came over to my seat. I was reading 
Hutton's Contemporary Thought and Thinkers. 

I looked up and saw a man of strong person- 
ality who smiled at me as he took his seat. I 

[167] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

said to him, "I begin to think our newspapers 
make good with their pictures of well-known 
individuals, and if I mistake not you are Arch- 
bishop Ireland." " Yes," he said and we entered 
into a lively talk. 

He noticed my books and inquired of me what 
they were about. On my answering he took 
Hutton's work and was soon interested. After 
reading a few pages he said, "This is fine read- 
ing." I mentioned several other books which I 
thought he would like to read, but he said: "The 
fact is, I have no time to read." However, I 
gave him a list of books and he thanked me. The 
next day he invited me to dine with him in the 
dining car. At the evening meal I invited him 
to sup with me. "Oh," said he, "that would 
never do." "Yes, yes," I said, "I am a bishop 
too, just a little one." He laughed and we spent 
a delightful time after supper. Indeed, we felt 
as if we had been acquainted for years. 

At our parting in Chicago, he said, "If you 
ever come to St. Paul you must call on me." 
The next time I was in St. Paul I called a't 
the palace and had a delightful visit with him. 
When it became known that I was a friend of 
the Archbishop I soon had calls to lecture to the 
Knights of Columbus. So that I have green 
ribbons and gold seals galore and once on St. 
Patrick's eve I spoke to seventeen hundred in 
the basement of the Roman Catholic Church. 

I never had any trouble with Roman Catholic 

[168] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland and Brierley 

priests on my fields. Once I received a very kind 
letter from a priest in Maryland, who had read 
my article in the Springfield Republican on the 
Menace of Race Prejudice, thanking me heartily 
for my words. At another time at Ebensburg, 
Pa., I was introduced to the priest of the town, 
who on hearing my name asked if I was the same 
Puddefoot who wrote that article, and when I 
assured him that I was, the good man said, "My 
housekeeper is away and I cannot ask you to 
dine with me, but you and your friends of the 
Conference can have rooms at my house." How 
true it is that "a soft answer turneth away wrath, 
but grievous words stir up anger." 

In common with many readers in England 
and America I have found valuable light and 
leading in the works of the late Rev. Jonathan 
Brierley, and I was moved one day to confess 
to him the extent of my obligation. I inclosed 
in my letter a copy of the following "Allegory," 
which I wrote some years ago for the Spring- 
field Republican and which I am moved to re- 
print in view of the possibility that it may help 
others, as I happen to know it has already in 
spoken or written form helped a number of per- 
sons. I append the reply I received from Mr. 
Brierley, because it reveals the wonderful way 
in which he was led by the divine spirit. 



[169] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

THE UPLANDS OF GOD 

(An Allegory of Life) 

Walking in a great forest I became aware that 
I had lost my way, and although I was born 
there, I had hitherto friends who had guided me 
through its intricate thickets— but now I had 
struck out for myself and at my first venture I 
was lost. At first I did not feel alarmed, for 
there were so many beautiful things which 
charmed me, and it was not until the red light 
faded in the west and the damp chill of the eve- 
ning struck me that I began to fear. As it grew 
darker a storm arose. The giant oaks groaned 
as if in pain; large branches of the trees were 
broken off, some of them falling quite close to 
me, and added to these dangers I heard the sul- 
len growls of wild beasts. Many times I had 
heard them before and had enjoyed the storm, 
the lightning and the heavy roll of thunder min- 
gled with the fierce howls of the wolves, but that 
was when my guides were with me and could 
protect me. 

However, the night passed and at the first 
blush of dawn I was bent on finding my way 
out of the forest. I followed the broadest paths 
only to find myself going in a perpetual circle. 
At last I spied a very narrow path which was 
well-nigh choked with brambles, but I plunged 
in and after many scratches and occasional falls 

[170] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland and Brierley 

I found myself in a lovely valley. On either 
side rose lofty hills covered with the varied hues 
of the forest trees. Little streams came dancing 
down into the sunlight, while hidden orchestras 
of birds in the liquid notes of the early morn 
seemed praising God for a daybreak, and here I 
lived in great content for many years. It was 
here that Bunyan's shepherd boy found the 
heart's-ease, and here I found it, too. I knew 
every turn of the way, the flowers, the birds and 
every wind of the crystal streams which flowed 
uncontaminated by the city's filth. Ah, it was 
indeed a sweet place wherein to live ; no storms, 
no wild beasts were there and heaven seemed 
sure as death. My horizon was so narrow that 
it was as clear-cut as a house against a primrose 
sky. 

One day while visiting an old man, he took 
from a quaint desk a book. It was a guide-book 
to the regions above among the hills. The good 
man said, "I have often thought that I would 
like to follow the directions in this book, but I 
am too old, and fears come with age ; but I think 
if I were as young as you I would venture." I 
took the book and began to read, and while I 
read my valley receded and I found myself high 
up the hillside, only to find there were still higher 
hills to climb. I felt a little sadness creep into 
my heart as my valley was lost to view, but I 
was partly revived by the pure air and the ex- 
quisite view that billowed away in waving colors 

[171] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

until lost in the softened pearly gray of an indis- 
tinct horizon. The mountain air gave fresh vigor 
to my thoughts, and the longer I read the higher 
I mounted, until at last my horizon had vanished, 
and try as I would, I could not distinguish earth 
from sky, and in spite of its grandeur I felt 
almost sorry that I had read the book. And 
while I mused the mists arose so thickly that 
my view was gone and I could barely see my 
feet. What could I do? I dared not move. I 
wished that I were back in my valley, but, alas, 
I could not go back, and if I could I must ever 
remember what I saw upon the mountain's side, 
and then I understood what the Cherubim and 
the flaming sword meant. No going back when 
once a new truth comes into the soul. 

The words of an old book came to me, "Stand 
still and see the salvation of God." So I stood, 
but soon the mists became rolling clouds, forked 
lightning zigzagged through their rifts, and I 
started upward and renewed my climbing. Pres- 
ently I looked down upon the clouds, no longer 
dun-colored and threaded with the lightnings, 
but like a sea of mother-of-pearl. I felt a great 
relief as I drank in the glory of the scene. This 
lasted but a short time, for I began to suffer 
from the thin air, which, while it braced me, 
pierced me, too. Luckily, I had bread with me, 
and after eating I felt much relieved and did 
not mind the cold so much. 

I was much surprised that I seemed to be the 

[ 172 ] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland and Brierley 

only one upon the mountain, but I was mistaken ; 
there were quite a number, but owing to the 
immense spaces they were far apart, and I think 
this clear, free air caused them to shrink from 
publicity, and they were apt to hide in sheltered 
nooks while enjoying the enlarged view. 

I now felt quite lonesome, and realized that 
no scenery, however grand, compensated for the 
loss of my kind. As I was in this mood I heard 
a groan, and tried to find out whence it came. 
I cried out and, to my joy, I was answered. 
Walking quickly toward the place, I found a 
man in distress. He had once lived in my valley 
and had started as I had, but had forgot to take 
bread with him, and having experienced such 
difficulties as I had, the lack of food had brought 
him low. I gave him some of my bread and 
brought him water from a spring. His look 
of gratitude and thanks sent comfort to my heart 
as I heard these words: "If ye do the will ye 
shall know of the doctrine," and my horizon was 
clear once more. I sometimes think of the valley 
with a certain fondness, but I have never wished 
to leave the uplands of God. Some I have 
known who have tried to live in the valley again, 
but they are not happy. They know too much 
for the valley folks, and are suspected, and they 
dare not know more and be free. As for myself, 
I will never despise the vale that once sheltered 
me, but from this on "my help cometh from the 
hills," "and the strength of the hills is His also." 

[173] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

me. brierley's reply 

My dear Sir and Brother: Your letter has 
reached me here and I have read it with the 
greatest interest. I am glad indeed to know that 
my works have been helpful to you. I get sim- 
ilar assurances from various parts of the world 
and they are among my greatest rewards as a 
writer. I see that you have been through the 
fire. You history corresponds remarkably with 
my own. Born into a deeply religious but very 
narrow circle, I soon found myself in revolt 
against many of the current ideas and for a time 
went in for negation and infidelity. That, how- 
ever, brought no peace. 

I realized later the truth of Christianity and 
that it was "tremendously true," as Chalmers 
said. I joined the Congregational church and 
became an active Christian writer, went to col- 
lege and was for some years in the active 
pastorate. 

A failure of health brought my resignation 
and I then went to the Continent, where I resided 
for some four years. There, in immediate con- 
tact with the intellectual movement of France 
and Germany, specially in relation to philosophy 
and Biblical science, I had to revise my views all 
along the line. 

But I kept in touch with the vital essence of 
the gospel and I rejoice to realize now, in my 
seventieth year, that I have a dearer, stronger 

[174] 



Drummond, Archbishop Ireland arid Brierley 

faith in God and in this supreme revelation in 
the gospel than I ever had before. I realize it 
as something beyond mere reason, as an instinct 
of the soul. The heart, as Pascal says, has its 
reasons which are deeper than reason. Your 
allegory will be understood by all who have 
traversed that way. 

I know your forest, your valley and your 
mountain height. It is good to be up there. 

God bless you, dear brother, in all your re- 
maining years and in all your work for God. I 
seem to have a host of friends on your side. 
America interests me profoundly. It is evi- 
dently to be the theater of the greatest human 
movements. If the superman is ever to be born, 
that will be his birthplace. 

Ever heartily yours, 

J. Bbierley. 



[175] 



CHAPTER XX 
THE STRANGE POWER OF WORDS 

What I am about to say under this heading 
may seem too personal even for an autobiog- 
raphy. But, believe me! it is not said with the 
least swelling of pride; only with wonder and 
profound gratitude. 

When in Washington, D. C, some winters 
ago, a gentleman came to me smiling and said: 
"Mr. Puddefoot, I wish you would dine with 
me at my club." "That fits me down to the 
ground," I said. Then with a far-away look in 
his eyes he said, "Some years ago you spoke in 
Mt. Vernon Church and you said a few words 
that changed my whole life and made me what 
I am in missions." "I would like to know what 
they were, I will use them again." "They were 
very simple words," he replied. "You said, 'We 
have plenty of money for things we like. 3 " This 
man, until his lately lamented death, was one 
of our great missionary leaders, Mr. John B. 
Sleman. 

At another time when lecturing in an Indiana 
college I was met by a gentleman who said: 
"You do not know me, but I know you. Do 

[176] 



The Strange Power of Words 

you remember lecturing at the Chautauqua 
Assembly in Framingham many years ago?" 
"Yes." "Well, a word you spoke then led to 
my conversion." Now I did remember the occa- 
sion well. For the first time in my life I had 
had a very close haircut. In fact, my head was 
sandpapered, as we say, and my old friend, R. 
L. Day, just before I rose to speak, told the 
audience he would not be responsible for me, as 
I had evidently been with some Delilah who had 
sheared my locks. I was in a jovial mood and, 
to the best of my recollection, my talk was the 
most rollicking one I had ever given. Yet some- 
where it contained a word which the Spirit used 
to convert a man. 

After telling the following experience in a 
gathering where Joseph Cook was present, he 
said to me, "I am profoundly impressed by the 
story; it ought to be printed in pamphlet form 
and scattered broadcast." It never was, but I 
give it here to illustrate the singular power of 
a few simple words. Preachers should never 
lose faith in their message. Many an arrow of 
speech shot into the air at random may be found 
where the poet found his song, "in the heart of 
a friend." 

It was in January some few years ago when 
I arrived at a bustling New England town 
among the hills. I had scarcely taken my seat 
in the parsonage when the pastor and his wife 
began to tell me about a dreadful man in the 

[177] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

place. "He is a doctor and a regular atheist. 
Yes, and he is taking his dear little wife along 
with him; and she is a member of our church' 
and passed through the skeptical period of 
Wellesley College. Yes, and he pitches into 
every minister that comes to town and he will 
pitch into you, and oh, here he is." 

Sure enough the doctor was on hand. After 
the introduction, and before he was seated, he 
said, "Mr. Puddefoot, what do you think of 
Balaam's ass speaking?" "Not very much," I 
replied. "I have heard a better voice." "Eh, 
what?" "I have heard a better voice." "Well, 
you are a queer kind of a preacher." "Yes, I 
am just a homemade one." 

The pastor and his wife had a pleasant sur- 
prised look, which soon faded away at the answer 
to the next question. "What do you think of a 
God that was afraid the people would build so 
high as to get into heaven?" "Well, I suppose 
that was as great a God as the people could 
imagine at that time, when they thought the sky 
was a solid firmament and the angels rolled the 
stars over the holes at night." 

"Why, you are a queer kind of a minister." 
Pastor and wife very solemn. Doctor all off his 
bearings for a moment, but returns to the charge. 
"Well, well, Mr. Puddefoot, apart from a 
whale's capacity to swallow a man, what do you 
think of a human being living three days and 
nights in a whale's belly?" "Oh, I pity a man 

[178] 



The Strange Power of Words 

who troubles himself about Jonah's keeping 
house in a whale, and missing the tender gospel 
of the story of a Jew with a wider outlook, who 
found that God not only cared for Jewry, but 
also for the heathen, for those who knew not their 
left hand from their right, think of that." 

"Well, I never did; but what do you think 
of David's being a man after God's own heart?" 
"I think he was." "You do?" "Yes, do you 
remember when Saul was sent to kill men, 
women, oxen and sheep — and how he saved 
Agag, and Samuel heard the bleating and low- 
ing and rent his mantle and slew Agag before 
the Lord?" "Yes, I know it all. I have read 
the Bible." "Well, suppose David had been 
given that job, don't you think he would have 
made a clean sweep of it if he had been told to 
do it?" "I believe he would." "Well, then, he 
would have been a man after God's own heart, 
would he not?" "What kind of a God do you 
call that?" "The kind they had in David's time. 
You must not read the 19th century's con- 
ception of God into David's period by your good 
light." 

Pastor and wife feel depressed. The next 
Sunday morning the doctor came around and 
took me for a ride, plied me with questions and 
afterwards came to church. Around at the par- 
sonage again after dinner and then another ride. 
"The people will talk, Mr. Puddefoot," says the 
parson's wife. "Let them," I said, "it will do 

[179] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

them good to have something fresh to think 
about." Doctor at church again in the evening, 
people surprised, most unusual thing. 

Monday morning the doctor came to take me 
to the depot. "Mr. Puddefoot," he said, "I don't 
want to be an ungodly man. I have been through 
the university, my wife is with me, we can't take 
what the parson gives us. I was brought up by 
a good old Scotch Covenanting mother. I can't 
believe half the things she taught me. What's 
a man to do?" 

"I don't know whether I have wisdom enough 
to teach you, but what have you against Christ?" 
"Nothing." "Well, you listen to him and you 
won't be troubled about Balaam's ass talking for 
the rest of your life." To my surprise he turned 
his face toward me and I saw that he was 
weeping. We had now arrived at the station. 
"Good-by and God bless you," he said and he 
was gone. 

Before going into the ministry I kept a black- 
board in my shop. I did this for practice, as I 
had a good deal of blackboard work in the Sun- 
day school. One day I made a rural picture 
which my old friend, Henry Anderson, thought 
rather nice, and that was a good deal for him to 
say, as he did not care particularly for pictures. 
The next day I drew a large lion in its place and 
my friend exclaimed: 

"Why did you rub off the pretty country scene 
and put this big brute in its place?" 

[180] 



The Strange Power of Words 

"I don't know," I said; "perhaps I shall find 
out if I let it stay there." 

The next day a big young fellow from the 
country came in. He made me think of Tenny- 
son's shoemaker, whose young face was "like a 
codlin washed in dew." He caught sight of the 
lion, "My, but that's a great beast. Did you 
draw it?" 

"Yes, but did you ever hear of the lion of the 
Tribe of Judah?" 

"No," he answered. 

"Why, what church do you belong to?" 

"I don't belong to any." 

"Isn't it about time you did?" I asked. 

"I guess it is. I am eighteen and I came 
pretty near dying of typhoid." I made no com- 
ment on that, and immediately he inquired, 
"Can you mend them soles?" showing a rather 
dilapidated pair of boots. 

"Yes, I can, and you had better be looking 
after your soul." 

Two days after a great, grizzled-looking man 
came into my shop. 

"Say," he began, "don't you preach some- 
times?" 

"Yes, all the time," I said. 

"What do you mean?" 

"When I say I will have a job done I do it 
on time if I have to work till two o'clock in the 
morning." 

"But don't you ever preach in a church?" 

[181] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

"Yes, I preached three times. I took different 
texts, but I preached the same sermon." 

"Well, our domine is away, and can you come 
Sunday evening?" 

"Yes, but how shall I get there?" 

"I will come Sunday afternoon with my 
buggy." 

He came and I went. But before we got out 
of town I felt that I was with a first-class hypo- 
crite. He told of his infidel wife, of his bad 
crops and a sick son, and complained bitterly of 
the way God treated him. Coming in sight of 
his house, he said: 

"I do believe my son has had a relapse, and 
there is the doctor's buggy"; and he gave the 
old horse a clip that made me jump and almost 
dislocated my neck. He introduced me to his 
wife and she certainly gave me a cool reception. 
When the doctor left, I heard a voice cry out, 
"I want that man to come in and pray with me." 
I thought the voice sounded familiar, and when 
I went in I recognized the sick son as the young 
fellow who had stared at my lion. 

"I want you to pray for me." 

"All right, and you pray for yourself. One 
of your prayers will be worth a dozen of mine." 

The lad did so and soon fell asleep. When 
the mother came in, tip-toeing, with his medicine 
— "Don't disturb him," I said. "He is all right 
— there's no relapse. I know his trouble, and 
I have given him a dose of the balm of Gilead." 

[182] 



The Strange Power of Words 

"Why, I never heard of such a medicine." 

"Well, it is the best thing in the world for his 
trouble. I was troubled that way myself once 
and it cured me." 

"I am afraid you are a joker," she said. "I 
didn't know that Christians joked." 

"They are the only ones that can," I said. 
" 'As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is 
the laughter of fools.' " 

"I wish I could hear you preach," said she. 

"I wish you could," I said. "But, Mother, 
you will be doing as divine a service watching 
your boy as you would listening to a sermon." 

When I returned to the house I asked after 
the lad. He was still sleeping and had no fever. 
Next morning while the man was doing his 
chores, as I thought, I began talking to the 
mother, when suddenly the young fellow came 
out of the chamber dressed and ready for 
breakfast. 

"Why, Jack," his mother exclaimed, "you 
look perfectly well." 

"I be, Mother, I be. I had a dream in the 
night that frightened me. A great lion was 
glaring at me; his mane seemed to be waving 
with light like fire. I crouched down and shut 
my eyes, expecting every moment he would 
spring upon me, but on opening them I saw no 
lion but a little lamb, and I thought of what this 
man said about the Lamb of God. Then I 
slept till morning — and now, Mother, I'm going 

[183] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

to be a Christian and I want you to go with 
me." 

We were about to kneel for prayer when the 
old man, who, instead of going out to the barn, 
had been listening, came in and asked his wife 
to forgive him. "I want to be prayed for, too." 

After breakfast I left a happy family and 
went out into the garden and sang: 

"For the lion of Judah shall break every chain, 
And we will sing of salvation again and again." 



risi] 



CHAPTER XXI 

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT AUDIENCES 
AND BOOKS 

"Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time: 
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes 
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper, 
And other of such vinegar aspect 
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile. 
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." 

These words apply to the extremes only; but 
the extremes are in nearly all audiences. Some 
laugh first and think of the meaning after. 
Others turn the pathetic into a farce. Audiences 
are often like sheep, following the first one that 
jumps the fence. The stern person who sits as 
stolid as a statue is a terrible damper on a be- 
ginner, who is likely to waste all his strength in 
the effort to subdue him. My experience has led 
me to drop him. Get your audience, and you 
become a thousand-man power, and your solitary 
has to go with the flood. 

The intellect is no match for the emotions. 
All its vaunted strength goes down before the 
"one touch of nature that makes the whole world 
kin." This applies to all audiences no matter 
what subject is under discussion; but there is 
a great difference between an audience in church 
[185] | j 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

on Sunday and the same people who have paid 
to hear a lecture. What will cause smiles and 
even laughter on Sunday, simply because the 
thing said was in a pulpit and by a minister and 
on Sunday, too, will fall very flat to people who 
have paid twenty-five cents to come in on 
Monday. 

An audience wound up to the highest pitch 
of expectation is a hard one to face, but if you 
have a message that stirs your own soul, you 
need not care for king or kaiser. People used 
to say to me before I came to New England, 
"You will find a very different condition of 
things when you speak there — cold, intellectual, 
hard to touch," etc.; all of which is simply non- 
sense. On account of the general diffusion of 
knowledge, audiences are much the same in any 
center of population, but no better, warmer- 
hearted people to address can be found in the 
wide world than these same New Englanders. 
They do not send boxes and money to the front 
because of intellect so much as from warm hearts. 
I have heard applause oftener in New England 
than anywhere, when some topic of interest had 
been touched with vigor. 

For an audience, en rapport, compressed dy- 
namite, give me the college students. No dis- 
secting an argument is needed. Before half the 
sentence is out they have the whole. They seem 
to know what is coming and meet you half way. 
Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor 

[186] 



What I Know about Audiences and Books 

make grand audiences. Here are youth, enthu- 
siasm and faith, unmixed with doubt. As long 
as the speaker is telling something of real life, 
the people are all interest, but tell them how 
many times Connecticut will go into Montana, 
and you will at once realize the significance of a 
yawn. 

The more intelligent the audience, the easier 
to reach them. All roads are open to a well- 
educated audience. From primitive man down 
through all the sciences to the last psychological 
novel, you have only to say, Cheops, and all 
Egypt is spread before them — Rameses, the 
Nile, waving palms, burning sands and the 
afterglow, discounting instantaneous photo- 
graphs. And should you say something not 
understood, they always respect a man who 
goes beyond their depth and are too self-respect- 
ing to admit they did not understand. They 
are quick to forgive a mistake, as well as to catch 
a point. My audiences have generally been of 
this character, and I have no ground of 
complaint. 

There was a time when it took but little to 
spoil my meeting — bad weather, the information 
that "our choir is in a transition state from chorus 
to quartet," or vice versa, or "our tenor has lost 
his mother-in-law," "our soprano has a bad cold," 
"our contralto has just been married," "sorry 
you could not come last week, our best families 
are at the seaside," or in the fall, "the best giver 

[187] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

has just left for Florida," and, oh! hardest of 
all, "our audience is not up to the usual standard, 
for some reason or other." As it is a fine day 
you feel a load on your mind as being the inno- 
cent cause of the depleted numbers. All this was 
years ago. I can say now, "None of these things 
move me." "You won't have more than forty 
out this evening," said a sexton in a church that 
held 1,200; and when he saw over 400, he said, 
"Wal, I wonder what got into 'em!" But small 
or large, I do my best, country church or city, 
and never lash those present because of the 
absent ones. 

For a grand audience, with a good share of 
solid men, Portland, Me., and Toronto stand 
first in all the continent. To see a thousand 
people at church on Monday evening to hear an 
address on The Indian Work, as I did in Port- 
land, revives one's faith in humanity and leaves 
more than a hope for "poor Lo." 

Once a lecture bureau offered me $600 a 
month and four months' vacation, but there was 
so much commercialism connected with it that I 
declined. One good old minister said I ought 
to lay up something for a rainy day. I answered, 
"The Lord will provide, bread shall be given 
him, his water shall be sure." 

"Yes," he answered dryly, "the Lord may take 
care of you in the poorhouse." That rather hurt 
me, coming from an old pastor of mine. Never- 
theless, I rallied from it. 

[188] 



What I Know about Audiences and Boohs 

Often I have seen the last nickel, but never 
yet did I go hungry, that is, since I was a boy, 
and a boy is always hungry. It is strange to hear 
people sing, "How firm a foundation!" and yet 
go on toiling and grubbing for the bread that 
satisfieth not. It was this eagerness for things 
that perish among professing Christians that 
kept me out of the church so long. 

Every preacher is an ordained prophet. If 
he feels no prophetic stirring in his soul, then 
let him take to lecturing. But for myself, when 
I speak to the people, I want to speak with 
authority. With Luther I want "to sink myself 
deep down" and shout at the end of every sen- 
tence, "Thus saith the Lord!" not, "Thus saith 
the lecture bureau." 

As nearly as I am able to explain it, this is my 
instinctive preference for the pulpit over the lec- 
ture platform : I am the least of minor prophets 
and not exempt from errors. Some of my best 
friends greet me, "You old heretic!" They 
smile, by which I know they don't believe it, and 
I smile back, for I can still sing: 

"Jesus, thy name I love 

All other names above. 

Jesus, my Lord." 



It is at least thirty years ago that Dr. Leroy 
Warren, then superintendent of home missions 
in Michigan, asked me to write a list of books 

[189] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

suitable for home missionaries. Since that time 
I have been asked many times by other ministers 
similar questions. An old proverb says, "The 
poor workman quarrels with his tools," but the 
best of workmen needs tools, and, as a rule, uses 
good ones. Now books are the minister's tools, 
and I found out early in my ministry that I must 
not only have books, but good ones. No man 
can rely on his own thoughts. 

The first book I bought was very helpful, 
Uhlhorn's "Conflict of Heathenism with Chris- 
tianity," followed by Allen's "Continuity of 
Christian Thought," Theodore Hatch on "The 
Influence of Greek Thought," Toy's "Judaism 
and Christianity." An epoch-making book for 
me was Canon Freeman tie's "The World as the 
Subject of Redemption." Robertson Smith's 
"Religion of the Semites" and his "Prophets of 
Israel," and Dean Stanley's books, followed, 
with Robertson's Sermons. 

But it was reading Dr. Josiah Strong's "Our 
Country" that gave me a plan which I have 
carried out with great satisfaction to myself. I 
noticed that he referred to Mackenzie's "Nine- 
teenth Century" and David A. Wells's "Recent 
Economic Changes" quite often. These works 
were great helps. I think every minister ought 
to read Mackenzie. Of course Lecky's "History 
of European Morals" is one of the great books, 
as are Dr. Andrew Dickson White's "A History 
of the Warfare of Science with Theology in 

[190] 



What I Know about Audiences and Books 

Christendom," Principal Tulloch's "History of 
Religious Thought in Great Britain in the Nine- 
teenth Century." Prof. W. N. Clarke's "Sixty 
Years with the Bible" is a classic, and "The 
Divine Ideals of Jesus," his last work, is beyond 
praise. Scores of other books I got on the track 
of by following the same plan, i. e. } looking at 
the foot-notes in great books. 

I think for the average minister's library I 
know of no books which set one to thinking equal 
to the works of the late Jonathan Brierley of 
England, known as J. B. Many critics pro- 
nounced him the finest essayist of his time, rank- 
ing above Hutton of The Spectator. He seems 
to have an universal knowledge of history, and 
draws his facts and illustrations, from the foot- 
print of Buddha (which was large or small, 
according to the faith of the onlooker) down 
through all the ages of saints and philosophers, 
to the last statement of the scientist. The first 
of his books that I purchased was "Ourselves 
and the Universe," and it certainly opened up 
a new world in literature. I loaned the book 
to a lady of fine critical taste, and she was so 
taken with it that she went to Boston and bought 
a copy for herself, before finishing it. 

The Outlook says of Brierley's studies of the 
soul: "To the theological reviewer, weary of 
ponderous tomes containing so many, many 
pages and so very little original thought, this 
small volume is a pure delight. This book 

[191] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

reaches us in its second edition — it deserves to 
go to the twentieth." The Evangelical Maga- 
zine says, "Working largely, as the author does, 
through intuition, he arrives at results which 
often surprise and delight us." 

The above quotations I heartily indorse. One 
never tires of Brierley. Some of these volumes 
I have read four times. Lay them away for six 
months and they come out as fresh as ever. 
There is such breadth and boldness that one 
feels that he is carried into the very uplands of 
God, but always in sight of his pole star, which 
is Jesus. I know of no set of books so suitable 
to those who are amazed and confounded by the 
rapid changes of religious thought, through the 
study of anthropology, and especially of arche- 
ology, which show the great length of time our 
world has been in the making, not only in the 
record of the rocks, but the lessons from the 
monuments. 

Many of these truths stagger the imagination, 
and persons who have been taught that the world 
is six thousand years of age feel amazed by the 
facts. One thing is sure : no scientific truth ever 
did or ever will hurt religion. That these facts 
may upset many doctrines of men is equally 
sure, and all those souls who are troubled by the 
recent and ever-occurring changes will find in 
Brierley a guide who will lead them in safety 
to the Master himself. 

The range of other books which might be sug- 

[192] 



What I Know about Audiences and Boohs 

gested is wide — too wide to be considered here. 
For a beginner, Farrar's "Messages of the 
Books" will be helpful as an introduction to a 
well-proportioned acquaintance with the Bible. 
It is a mildly liberal book, and teaches the order 
of the books. All spiritual biographies are good 
reading and do more to help one's spiritual 
growth than any other kind of literature, besides 
furnishing illustration from life. The story of 
Thomas Chalmers, who is the father of the mod- 
ern social ministries of the churches ; of Living- 
stone, the pioneer missionary; of Paton of the 
New Hebrides ; and other missionaries ; of Rob- 
ertson of Brighton and Bushnell of Hartford: 
make us acquainted with leaders of Christian 
thought. John Bunyan's autobiography is a 
great study. The lives of Moody and many 
others of that type are of great help to a hard- 
working minister. Dr. Gladden's books are 
most helpful. "The Sociological Teachings of 
the Bible," by Wallis, is a book for the times, as 
is Rauschenbusch's "Christianity and the Social 
Crisis." Of course Dr. Horace Bushnell's works 
should be in every minister's library. 



[193] 



CHAPTER XXII 
WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 

"Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be." 

So sing I with Browning in my seventy- fourth 
year, for still I find 

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

"Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty 
but kindly." 

Not but what I have my share of trouble, and 
doubts that come unbidden! Soon after my con- 
version I was reading Bunyan and received won- 
derful help from one sentence. He said: "There 
be seven things that yet trouble me. First, an 
inclination to unbelief." I forget the rest; that 
sentence comforted me. Could so great and good 
a man have such an inclination to unbelief? I 
felt as the French king did when met by a depu- 
tation of citizens who said there were thirteen 
reasons why the mayor did not come to welcome 
him. First, he was dead. "That will do, friends, 
and is quite sufficient." That was sufficient for 
me. At times I have cried with Job, "Oh, that 
I knew where I might find him!" Then again 

[194] 



Watchman, What of the Night? 

I have felt with the Psalmist, "Whither shall I 
flee from thy presence?" 

No one who thinks can be without doubts, but 
no one who thinks deeply and searches earnestly 
but will find "the Lord whom he seeks suddenly 
come to his temple." 

No one, old or young, should feel satisfied with 
the present. There are many wrongs to be 
righted, and yet when my memory goes back 
over seventy years I am glad when I remember 
the many wrongs that have been righted. I find 
myself growing more tolerant. I realize that 
nature never advances per saltwm, i.e., by jumps. 
"He that believeth shall not make haste." The 
improvements that have come — the prisons, the 
lunatic asylums, the homes of the poor, the grow- 
ing kindliness of the world — give me great hopes 
of more to follow. 

I well remember when a little boy in pinafores 
a prisoner was taken by my father. The man 
had stolen a duck from the King's Arms. I can 
see the beautiful colors of the bird now, and the 
strong man in dark corduroys, his great brown 
eyes and lashes filled with tears. He was taken 
to the village cage, and the next morning, in my 
Sunday best, I carried his breakfast down to the 
cage. I sat on the steps while he ate. The man 
was thankful, and did not try to run away, but 
what a lesson that was to me of love and pity! 
I have no doubt but my father took his cue from 
reading Dickens — the poorhouse that was built 

[195] 



Leaves from the Log of a Shy Pilot 

in a lovely spot, but without a window looking 
outward — now all this is changed. People do 
not pay a shilling now to see the poor lunatics 
chained to a post without any food from Satur- 
day until Monday. 

Talk about good old times compared with 
today, one can hardly believe the cruelties that 
existed in my younger years — the long hours of 
labor, the death rate among the poor, the hovels 
that many lived in. Miss Octavia Hall and our 
own Peabody began the good work with model 
homes and the People's Palace. In the East 
End of London are some of the signs of the 
good time coming, "When right not might shall 
rule mankind, and be acknowledged stronger." 
The proper impulse has been given. 

Wait a little longer. There are many of my 
dreams coming true. The Lever Brothers at 
Port Sunlight, the Cabury Brothers in England, 
the National Cash Register Co. in this country, 
the profit-sharing and a thousand reforms are 
here to stay. When I was a boy everybody 
drank. There was but one man in Westerham 
who was a total abstainer. He was called a tee- 
totaler. Today there are over twelve million 
total abstainers in Great Britain and many more 
on this side. Fifty years ago men went home 
drunk from the sacrament. To whistle on Sun- 
day was a greater sin than drunkenness. 

I have lived to see all this and much more 
changed for the better. I am as full of zest for 

[196] 



Watchman, What of the Night? 

more knowledge as ever, and I would walk a 
mile to see the metamorphose of a cicada. The 
last I saw made me think of Huxley with the 
salamander. He thought with a stronger glass 
he could see the artist at work. No glass would 
be strong enough, no fleshly eye could see, but 
with a spiritual eye there would be no need of 
a glass to know that the great spirit was at work. 

Many another of my dreams is coming true. 
Only this morning I noticed that a movement 
was on foot to build a model city in honor of the 
landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, absolutely up 
to date, and that would mean the fulfilling of 
the prophecy of Isa. 65 : 20, "There shall be no 
more thence an infant of days, nor an old man 
that hath not filled his days : for the child shall 
die a hundred years old." At least the child 
would have a chance to be born right. 

Of course I realize that it will take more than 
a model city to produce model men. I have 
passed many times little communities in Iowa 
where the people share in everything, all work- 
ing who can. They have five meals a day there, 
go to bed early, rise early and are wealthy; 
plain in their dress, plain in all their ways; no 
paint on their houses except on the ready-made 
sashes of their brick houses ; the gravestones are 
all of the same size and pattern, but there is 
such a lack of variety that the average man would 
shun such a life. 

No Brook Farms or Moore's Utopia will sat- 

[197] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

isfy the soul; neither will a Jerusalem in the 
clouds. Nothing but the vision of the apocalyp- 
tic seer that saw the holy city coming down from 
God out of heaven adorned as a bride for her 
husband, and to hear the voice which said, "Be- 
hold the tabernacle of God is with men and he 
shall dwell with them," will answer to the soul's 
wants. 

The older I grow the stronger is my faith that 
the wilderness and the solitary place shall be 
glad and the desert shall rejoice and blossom 
as the rose. 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroyed 
Or cast as rubbish to the void 
When God hath made the pile complete; 
That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 



In writing these rambling reminiscences I 
have experienced much pleasure. The many 
letters I have received from all over the country 
have added to the zest I have had in writing 
them. I have realized the truth which Emerson 
enforces in his essay on self-reliance: 

"Speak your latest conviction and it shall be 

the universal sense, else tomorrow a stranger will 

say with masterly good sense precisely what we 

have thought and felt all the time, and we shall 

T 198] 






Watchman j What of the Night? 

be forced to take with shame our own opinion 
from another." 

I know I have left out much, and that in spite 
of a good memory. As I grow older my mind 
constantly reverts to the past. I would rather 
read an old story for the tenth time than begin 
a new one. Dr. Salter Storrs was reading 
"Lorna Doone" for the fourteenth time before 
he died. Dr. Reuen Thomas of Brookline told 
me that he was reading "Alwyn" for the eighth 
time. There are books that I have read in part 
for the fortieth time, and while there is much 
good reading today, it lacks the charm to me of 
the great masters of the nineteenth century. The 
books of an older period do not appeal to me. 
I feel like the lady who was shown a book by 
Sir Walter Scott. "No," she said, "I cannot 
read that today, although in my younger years 
I read it and listened to the reading by young 
ladies." 

The world is surely growing better, and I do 
not wish to grow so old as to have fears for the 
future. Wordsworth in his prime sings to my 
heart, and I have a vivid experience of his when 
he writes : 

"Hence in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sights of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 

[199] 



Leaves from the Log of a Sky Pilot 

That last line had a marvelous effect on Dr. 
Norman McLeod. 

I am thankful for a memory that can image 
the past and make it real. I see the lovelight 
in my mother's eyes and feel her kisses on my 
face and still hear her prayers for my soul when 
she prayed in secret in her room, and to this day 
they are stronger than hooks of steel to keep 
me from floundering in the muddy bogs of ma- 
terialism, and so my last words to my readers are : 

"Grow old along with me; 
The best is yet to be; 

The last of life, for which the first was made. 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith : 'A whole I planned. 
Youth shows but half ; trust God, see all, 
Nor be afraid !' " 



[200] 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Par* Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



mm mm 



mmm 



;w;i 



HB 



^^M 



mmm 



:t ■ 



¥W: 



mmm 



mm 



HH 



THS 



:ii«-. 



HI. 



Hi H 



SH 



wmmm 



mmWA 



JliliM;-,! ::■:,';;: ■ ^^^H 



■ 



■H 



■p 



n 



I 



■ ifeifftl'-iv-i- ■ 






■ 



I'M^fiitfiOT/iM 



J»l 



^^■^M 



■ffiffi 



n 






KOTM^ 



■ M 



mm 



mn. 



mmi 



mm 



H 



mm 



■ 






■'.!r :'< ■ I 



■ 



! ! : i;Tjil 



^ilci::^!. 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




VMIIIIIIU 

017 457 426 1 • 



